The Shattered Shards

by Stephen J Wolf

  Hunger pains set in, though the bonds pressing against him helped alleviate some of the discomfort. There was no water to be had, so he worked to pull moisture from the air. Every enactment of magic caused the coils to heat up, but he didn’t care. He needed the water. Because his mouth was sealed, he had the added complication of condensing the liquid inside his nose and then trying to guide it magically in toward his mouth without choking on the drops. It was painstaking, but it kept him busy.

  Because of the nature of the bonds, he could not establish a set of spells that would continue to hydrate him in that fashion. The magical threads drew the magic away and each casting was like trying to climb a mountain during an avalanche. Yet he stayed firm and pulled the moisture when he needed it most. As time went on, though, the need grew stronger and stronger.

  Eventually, Dariak’s survival instincts inspired him. Hadn’t he been traveling with the jades all this time? Couldn’t their powers overcome even this binding? He felt foolish when the thought crossed his mind, for he hadn’t considered seeking the jades’ help. Sharice would scold him, he admonished himself, and then he smiled as he thought of her. She was ruthless, difficult, and unbending. Yet when Dariak had proven to be stronger, she folded. But, he reminded himself, it was the jades that had given him their power. He hadn’t done anything more than allow himself to be an open conduit for the lightning jade. The experience had shaken him and he only recently had stopped having random tremors from the residual energy.

  Yet times were desperate again. He needed to turn into a bolt of electricity right now and blaze his way out of the bonds. He needed that energy to escape. Without it, he was lost. Dariak closed his eyes and communed with the jade that was still in his pocket. It resonated with his thoughts and he smiled. Pyron had to have known that Dariak possessed the jades, yet they were bound with him and not removed. He wondered if it was fear. They would have needed to undo his restraints in order to fish around for the jades and perhaps in that time, Dariak could find a way to escape. He wondered, and not for the first time, if the jades themselves had protections that kept others from seeking them on his person. Or perhaps, more simply, their attention was elsewhere. Indeed, several mages had needed healing or burying after the escape of Dariak’s companions, not that he knew that.

  Dariak breathed deeply through his nose to steady his thoughts. He called to the lightning jade and shared with it his desperation. He could feel the anger within the crystal thrashing about, seeking release. The mage opened his mind wider to allow the lightning to possess him, though he also had to focus his thoughts so as not to allow other ideas to intrude. It was one of the earliest mage-oriented lessons his father had taught him, through his mother who read Delminor’s memoirs to their son. Opening the mind to the energies allowed them to fill him, but it would also let them run rampant if he didn’t control them. He thought of it like an inverted funnel, where on one end there was a vast open expanse, ready and waiting, but to get there required passing a narrower channel.

  The lightning sparked through his body. He could feel it running down one leg and up the other, leaving a trail of sharp numbness behind. It was like a fine knife cutting into his skin, followed immediately by a healing spell that nullified the pain, followed moments later by that unshakable feeling like when he would sit with his legs crossed for too long. He ignored all the discomfort that came to him, and begged for the jade to continue to strengthen him.

  Drawing the electricity through him brought the strange numbness to all of his limbs and then to his chest and his face. He could feel the energy starting to flow through him. It was an agonizingly slow process, considering that in his fight against Sharice, the change had been so sudden. He strained to pull the energies upward, through, and around, egging them on to flow frantically on their own. All he felt for his troubles was his body temperature increase from the effort. Soon he was sweating, and with his dehydration, he knew it was dangerous. But without the lightning, he had no idea how he would escape.

  In the end, he couldn’t maintain the electric flow. His body did not turn into lightning. He did not escape his bonds. Dejected, he grunted in annoyance, unable to think clearly at first. However, once his anguish subsided, he realized that the magical coils had been absorbing the energy from the lightning jade, and that’s why his body had become so hot. He was essentially cooking himself.

  But now… now what? The mages had included elemental counterspells in the restraints. He understood now that there was no way he could use the lightning, earth, or water jades. Hopelessness began to well within him. His father’s name was being destroyed by these mages whose very spells were those invented by Delminor. And here he was, trapped by a set of those same spells. This, then, would be where he died.

  He hated to wallow. It infuriated him, but he couldn’t deny his disappointment. His body grew weaker as time went on. Soon it took tremendous effort to pull any moisture from the air and he wondered what was worse; dying of dehydration or dying alone. Perhaps pitying himself was the worst feeling of all. It made his heart and will feel weak. He was stronger than that, he told himself. Hadn’t he done the unthinkable, by entering Gabrion’s mind through his Trial and helping him to free himself from his own inner prison? Hadn’t he made the most of his time in the Prisoner’s Tower by crafting a wide array of complex spells, such as the one he used to extract the rare reptigon serum? Wasn’t he the son of Delminor, who had unlocked the secrets of the jades and summoned the colossus in an attempt to end the wars?

  Dariak’s resolve strengthened. He compared it to one of Gabrion’s swords, resting at first as a lump of molten iron, then poured into a mold, and later hammered into shape and sharpened to perfection. He was the same. He was once just a boy who loved his father. Now he was the one chance left in the world of restoring Delminor’s name by completing his work the way it was meant to be. But to do so, he needed to be strong now. He needed to be sharp so that he could break through these bindings.

  Gabrion had the glass jade. The mages might not have a counterspell set up against that, but it wouldn’t help him now. He didn’t have the strength to try to use that jade’s magic on his own. Besides, for a working like that without the jade, he would need spell components to unlock the energies, as well as his fingers and voice. No, he needed something else that was obscure. He needed help from a source that the mages would not have anticipated in their haste.

  Dariak’s blood tingled. He thought at first that it was the lightning jade rising up to his call, but this was different. It was inside of him. And yet it wasn’t. He closed his eyes, half delirious at this point, and allowed his mind to flow along with his bloodstream. Through his head, then down to his heart, he plodded along. Then down the left side and again up toward the right. It reminded him of the energy flow that he had established to heal Kitalla all those months ago. The energies followed his blood’s circulation, but nothing else was happening.

  He knew what the problem was. He wasn’t listening. He was just along for the ride. He was letting other thoughts get in the way and carry him. Mind wide, but focused, Dariak reminded himself. The journey started again and as he went, he felt tiny glimmers all along the way, like a multitude of stars shining inside his body. It didn’t make any sense; there wasn’t any untapped power within him. Randler was so focused on the Forgotten Tribe and the lost generational line, that Dariak suddenly wondered if maybe… maybe…

  But Sharice had been adamant. Dariak was too strong-willed to be a descendant of the Forgotten Tribe and those cowardly sons who had fled the warring to save themselves. Could those stories even be true? It wouldn’t matter anyway, for if they were, Dariak was not descended of them. His lineage traced back to other lines, he was certain. No, it wasn’t him. He didn’t have some dormant power within him that was trying to call to him now.

  He groaned. His thoughts were rambling and because of that, he was losing his control. He could still feel the pinpricks within his blood, but he couldn’t make
sense of them, especially if his mind was wandering. He bit on his lip gently to try to help himself concentrate. He had seen Gabrion do that when he was deep in thought and it make him chuckle for a moment, the big tough warrior, lost in thought. Not that Gabrion wasn’t smart, but sometimes he looked the part of a bungling oaf, naïve and trusting his surroundings. He even saw it in himself, considering his appearance within the Trial as a blind ogre. He—

  Dariak grunted again. Hunger and thirst were making this so difficult. Logically, he knew a number of days had passed by. He had fallen asleep several times without realizing it, and the thoughts continued when he awoke. No one had come to check on him, and unless his estimate of the time was grossly wrong, then it meant that something else had happened. Yet the more time he wasted here in thought, the more likely he would never escape.

  After many attempts, Dariak’s desperation empowered him to follow the stabbing pains within his bloodstream. He knew they weren’t because of malnutrition or dehydration. There was a distinct difference between them and the other ways his body ached. The pinpricks were becoming more persistent and harder to ignore. Perhaps it was a signal that he was dying and that the blood was poisoned, but he didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he pushed his mind into his blood once more.

  Down, around, up. Down, around, up. Down, around—wait!

  He felt an extra pulse in his hip. No, not in his hip, against his hip. He hovered there for a moment and felt a pulsing energy that flashed with his heartbeat. He tried to remember what was there. Only a few minor spell components and the jades were with him. The jades were useless, though. The magical restraints were deflecting all their energies away.

  The pulsing continued, so Dariak opened his mind wider and he reached out toward the source. An odd sensation overtook him, and he had felt it before. He was indeed contacting a jade, but it was one he had only recently claimed. It was a jade that had been near him, but he hadn’t spent much time with at all, for Kitalla had kept it close to her heart ever since she had claimed it from Grenthar’s dungeon.

  Dariak let the metal jade pull him inside. It communicated to him in a strange manner. All he sensed was a rigid lattice with tiny gnats fluttering so rapidly he couldn’t follow them. And as he looked, the lattice was able to weave and bend and reshape itself. It reminded him of that odd thought that had occurred to him days earlier about one of Gabrion’s swords. He wondered now if the jade had planted the thought, trying to encourage him.

  A sword was solid and rigid. It was powerful and could slice through anything, but a sword needed room to swing so it could build enough momentum to strike. Dariak was tightly enwrapped and had no room to swing. He didn’t let hope fade away. He focused on the idea of a sword. If struck too hard, it could shatter. The pieces could be reassembled and mended. Yet to do so, they needed to be melted down a bit, or perhaps completely, in some cases. Iron, unlike wood, could withstand great heat and instead of burning, it would start to melt. It would draw in the heat and it would liquefy.

  A bright light pierced Dariak’s eyes, and he groaned against it. He thought he heard voices, but he was so focused on the metal jade that he barely paid them any heed. An image of Randler flashed before him and he was too disoriented to wonder if the bard was in his thoughts or if he was actually nearby.

  It didn’t matter anymore. The answer came to him. The pinpricks in his bloodstream called out to him, and he realized that there must somehow be metal inside his body, for why else would any part of his inner self resonate with the jade? He had had cuts before and sucked on the wound; hadn’t the blood possessed an oddly metallic taste? He reached his mind into the jade and gave himself over to its power.

  Yet nothing happened.

  Scrabbling, Dariak reconsidered the sword and iron image. To fix the sword, it needed—

  Dariak held on to the metal jade and kept his thoughts centered there, but he released a part of his mind to the lightning jade again. It was difficult being in two places at once, but he had partially succeeded doing so during Gabrion’s Trial. He would be completely successful this time. He called to the lightning jade, demanding its energy to strengthen him.

  The odd numbness started again, punctuated by the sharp spikes in his blood. None of it mattered, so long as the process worked. Then Dariak remembered that electricity was drawn toward metal, and part of him smiled. He channeled his thoughts differently, now, letting his consciousness spread fully through his own body. As he went, he triggered various metal buoys for the lightning to follow. The electricity chased eagerly, but the magical restraints did their work and drew strength from the lightning, which Dariak counted on. The bonds surrounding him heated up greatly and his body gained in temperature.

  When he thought he would pass out from all the effort, Dariak reached into the metal jade, begging for his body to lose its form, and the metal jade drew on all the heat within him and obliged.

  Dariak’s thoughts whisked back to his head in time to see the world through his hazy eyes. It was a quick glimpse of mages surrounding him with two standing very close by. He felt a strange kinship to those two, but he couldn’t recognize who they were at the moment. Suddenly, all the pain within him was gone. But so was the sensation of even having a body.

  When the lightning jade had subjugated Dariak in the fight against Sharice, all he felt was energy. His physical senses ceased to function and he was drawn to places of energy and toward various metals. This experience was different in some ways, for he felt incredibly heavy, yet able to move. Like a rolling sludge, Dariak willed himself away from his restraints, and suddenly he had the sensation of tumbling wildly, like he was trapped in a lopsided barrel speeding down a steep hill. He couldn’t control where he was going, but as long as it was away from the bindings, he was grateful.

  The journey stopped all of a sudden, and so he tilted himself in another direction, and the rolling sensation turned into rapid somersaults. As he went, he felt energy strike against him, but rather than stop him, he gained momentum from the blasts. His rolling increased with each attack, but he had no sense of where anyone or anything was located. His only thoughts were of getting away from the restraints and escaping the room.

  Despite the ceaseless spinning, he slowly gained a sense of other lifeforms in the area. He didn’t know how he could be tumbling so much yet still have any inkling of life around him, but a snippet of thought wondered if it was the same metal in other people that he was sensing. As he rolled himself along toward one such lifeform, he felt searing heat strike against him. This angered him, but, as before, it also made him roll faster. He crashed into the mage and toppled him. He couldn’t be sure of what was really happening, but he felt as if he was a rolling sludge of molten metal and that the mage died when he plowed into the man. At least, the sensation of life certainly ended after the contact.

  Dariak felt the other lifeforms retreat away, or perhaps he was shrinking to an impossibly small size, he didn’t know. Whatever the case, he knew only that he needed to escape. If they were fleeing, he needed to follow. It was hard to control his exact direction, but he kept tilting his thoughts toward those distant pinpricks of life energy and, with some effort, he made his way after them. He felt encouraged as he drew nearer, for it meant that he wasn’t actually shrinking.

  His awareness of the surroundings was better as a metallic blob than it had been as a bolt of lightning. Perhaps his density slowed him down enough that he could sense a little bit, but he soon realized that he was under attack. He had no way to counter the spells that were hurled toward him, so he leaned toward the sources until the spellcasting stopped. He was led through Magehaven and he had the sense that he was brought up several flights of stairs. They were difficult to traverse, but the added blasts of energy kept him going.

  Part of him was amused that the mages kept throwing spells his way, not realizing that they were giving him what he needed to continue. But eventually, the run would end. All things did.

  The life sparks sta
rted to dwindle after a while. His new form became very sluggish. He pushed hard to reach the next source of energy so that he could continue his rampage, and he was aware enough to understand that he was indeed rampaging. He couldn’t stop yet or he would be completely unprotected. He had no idea what the aftereffects of this transformation would be, but he had to wait as long as possible before finding out.

  One being was ahead of him and no others were nearby. This one person wasn’t launching spells his way, so he guessed the mage figured out the secret. Without spells shooting at him, his tirade would end. He reached for that spark of life, but it was ever out of reach. Rolling forward, then sideways, then diagonally led all to the same unsatisfying result. Then he realized what must have happened. The person must have climbed up onto something, so Dariak tried to follow, but his heavy metallic self was unable to follow.

  The one bit of food was all he could sense anywhere nearby, but it was beyond him. He could feel the effects of the jade starting to wear away. He tried to maintain this form, but he didn’t have the strength to do so. He couldn’t figure out anywhere to run to, for he was unable to sense walls and doors. Several attempts to roll away splattered him unsuccessfully against an obstacle, and he was too disoriented from the hunt to try to retrace any part of his path. He was also too tired and frantic to think of something methodical, like rolling along the walls until he passed through a doorway.

  No, the jade’s power was fading and when it was gone, Dariak lay defenseless in a heap on the floor, unable to move, and at the mercy of the other person in the room. His last thought before passing out completely was that even though he was about to die, at least he had escaped the restraints.