As the minutes marched on, unorganized throngs of men pushed through the lines of soldiers in front of her, retreating with their wounds. She hopped off the cart, rushing to every injured man she could find, urging them to let her look at them. Minor injuries were a quick fix — she redirected the men back into the fight after she Lifecast a few minor spells to heal cuts and bones and to fool the body into not feeling pain from a superficial wound.
As she worked her way through the soldiers, she moved towards closer to the lines of men until she was in the middle of them. Soon enough, the sounds of the battle, so close to her, drowned out all other noises. Her attempts to speak to the injured fighters resulted in yelling matches where neither participant understood the other. The injuries quickly turned from broken bones, sprains, and shallow cuts to missing limbs, stomach wounds which were complex to heal in the best circumstances, and deep gouges that placed the soldiers seconds from death. Those unable to retreat for medical care filled every gap between the warring armies, many crushed as the battle wore on.
The putrid smell of death thickened as Shara rushed to stabilize as many soldiers as she could. She glimpsed a lean Inari boy on the ground, his dark hair instantly making her think it could be James. She rushed forward, kneeling next to the soldier and rolling him over to look into his face. His open and dull eyes were brown, not blue. Guilt welled up inside her as she rejoiced that the dead boy was not James.
The men in front of her abruptly began to retreat as she kneeled next to the boy. She jumped to her feet and allowed the force of the soldiers to push her back in the direction she had come from. No matter which direction she craned her neck, she could not get a glimpse of anything but soldiers with wide eyes that echoed a sentiment of impending death.
The hair on her arm raised on end before she heard the familiar crackle growing louder. She saw the flash as the source collided with a man to her right—bright sparks erupting from his back a moment before she smelled the burnt skin and clothes. His mouth opened in a scream as he began to jerk and crumble to the ground, but over the surrounding sounds, she couldn’t hear it.
She felt the electricity in the air building up again. Instinctively, she pushed against the people that were pressed against her so she could turn and face the cast that was bearing down on them. The mountain air was crisp and dry, but there was enough moisture added from the battle around her to use. Shara focused and felt the response as she collected all the moisture in the air and off the ground to form a wall of mist between the soldiers, herself, and the Xenai caster’s lightning. What little traces of water her source had found was augmented with the sweat, tears and the blood of fallen soldiers. Right before the lightning hit the wall, she snapped her fingers and felt the mist contact into a red-tinged barrier of ice. The lightning hit and the wall shattered, launching slivers of ice out from the impact site. She let go of the cast so that each projectile turned back into steam before any of the shards hit her and the fleeing soldiers. She stood slightly behind the rest of the army and knew that they would aim the next bolt at her.
She whipped around and burst into a run, conjuring up some wind at her back to push her and the Pact army forward. The electric charge was building up in the surrounding air. The timing had to be perfect. She let her vision blur and her training pushed the effort of running into the back of her mind. She focused solely on the source building up behind her. The sense of it drawing near grew stronger until her mind screamed that the lightning would hit her before she made her move. She waited one more second, then leapt as high in the air as she could, pulling the wind after her for an extra push as she launched off of a fallen log with a quick Ambercast. The bolt flew past her, beneath her feet, hitting the ground in front of her, igniting the brush into flames. She landed directly in the fledgling flame and dropped into a roll past the fire to prevent it from latching on as she felt the heat through her robes.
She searched behind her for the familiar draw of power that would indicate another bolt was heading her way, but she felt nothing close to her. Yells and screams broke out to her right, she turned her head to look as she continued to run. The soldiers were under a barrage of bolts. She saw a few people fall as another dozen streaks of lightning collided into them. She choked back a sob as she stumbled over a branch and fell to the ground.
As she pushed herself to her feet, she heard more cries to her other side. She looked and saw another series of bolts hitting another group. She watched as a young woman tried to roll to the ground to avoid being hit, just to be found by a second bolt in the volley.
They’re casting far away from me so I can’t sense it and block it.
She slowed down and placed a hand on a supply cart. The urge to stop running and face them down to save the army burned inside of her. She could sacrifice herself to save the soldiers. She could protect them long enough to retreat, but she wouldn’t be able to get away herself. She glanced at the cart as she continued moving, recognizing the chips of blue paint on the old worn wood.
If I had stayed where I was, I could have shielded their retreat without giving myself away too early.
She tried to tell herself she had healed more soldiers than she had left unprotected, but even she knew there was no way to know if that was true.
The walk back to the new camp location was longer, as Shara tortured herself over her own choices. She had barely walked through the wooden barricades before an officer approached her to inform her that the General was waiting or her in the command tent. Walking to the tent, she slid through the flap, hoping to find Hafi busy and be able to stay unnoticed along the wall. She was not so lucky.
“You stupid girl,” Hafi did not raise his voice to yell—each word came out like a low growl from a wild animal about to pounce. She had never heard Hafi speak in such a way, and it frightened her more than any amount of yelling could have. “Did you think I put you there for no reason?”
Shara stepped forward toward where Hafi leaned over the strategy table, “I was useless there! I went to heal some soldiers!”
The growl rose to a roar in Hafi’s voice, “You were useless until the moment I had planned for you to be of use! The men you healed couldn’t fight! Most won’t be able to fight still for a long time! Your disregard of orders killed dozens of soldiers that would have been ready to fight again tomorrow!” His voice lowered again to a growl, “If you pull shit like that again, I’ll send you back to Prin. I have enough untrained men who can’t follow orders. I don’t need to deal with a trained girl who won’t.”
Shara dropped her head, remembering the soldiers who had been hit by the bolts and the pile of mangled bodies in the Blight Field. It’s bad enough I might have been able to protect them during the retreat. But, both times I was the reason they targeted the men in the first place. She wrinkled her nose to fight back the tears welling up in her eyes. “Yes, sir,”.
“Get out of here.”
She turned without raising her head and walked from the command tent. Not knowing where her tent was in the new camp, she was certain that looking for the right flag would cause her tears to fall, so she walked to the edge of the camp, putting everyone behind her, then sat on the ground and cried.
32
Ayna
In the four days since Ayna had recruited Bobi, she had stopped two resignations from her science team and tried to architect a system for the science team and the Artificers to work together. Now, with only hours left until Bobi arrived, she had to implement some insurance.
“Are you sure they won’t know?” Ayna asked.
Matt shrugged in non-commitment, “It’s not likely, but maybe one of them is better with tech than most people. I can’t make any guarantees. But, unless they can find and uninstall the software, you’ll get a copy of everything they send.”
“Including who they’re sending it to?”
Matt simply nodded as he leaned over the large terminal and started unplugging the cable that connected to his light tab.
“Bobi!” Ayna threw her hand in the air so that Bobi saw her in the thick crowd of students that shuffled through the courtyard. The crowd parted for the large man as naturally as a stream around a rock. Towering above even the other Illara in the crowd, it was easy to watch his progress toward the stone steps that Ayna waited upon. The crowd left a gap behind him as he waded through it, giving away that he was pulling something large behind him. Finally, he arrived at the base of the stairs.
“Welcome. Let me get you introduced to Doctor Hunt and his team. They are excited to meet you. When is your assistant coming?”
Bobi smiled, “I doubt that excited is the correct word... She is coming tomorrow. She wanted to hand off her current projects in person.”
Anya wrinkled her nose at his jab at the scientists’ attitude towards the Artificers, even though he was entirely correct, “I can appreciate her dedication to her projects.” She turned to retreat up the stairs, “This way. It’s still quite a walk from the center of campus.”
As Bobi moved forward, he pulled the trolley behind him that held a series of wooden crates bound in metal supports. He moved to face the trolley and pull it precariously up each step. The crates were tied down with several ropes, but even so they shuddered as he yanked each pair of wheels up another step.
Ayna paused at the top. Bobi still had halfway to go to clear the top, and it gave Anya time to ponder what he could have brought in the boxes. They were obviously heavy, not basic necessities he may need to keep in the student’s apartment they were giving to him and his assistant. Unless Bobi had taken to wearing clothing made of lead, he had brought supplies or equipment. Anya did not know what he would think was so necessary that the top of the line facilities at the U didn’t already have.
The walk to the lab at the outskirts of the university grounds was a pleasant one, given the slow pace Bobi set with his cart. Anya enjoyed the stroll, admiring the last of the birds that had not yet flown south. They reached the thick doors and Anya swiped her LightTab across the top of the small black pillar and placed her hand on the scanner. The doors clicked and swung open towards them.
As they stepped inside and the doors closed behind them, Anya immediately noticed the looks of disdain being shot her way by the team of scientists that stood on the raised platform in the center of the open room. They tried to glance quickly and hide behind the screens of their monitors, but they were not nearly as subtle as they thought themselves to be. Anya knew Bobi would take their opinions in a stride and cover his actual feelings with humor. She did not know what to expect from his assistant. The girl was young and from Ayna’s research into her; she had rarely been out of the Underground, let alone near any prominent Topsiders. Anya half expected to meet her and discover that she had the pointy nose and tiny eyes of a mole. Thinking like that won’t help the situation. She scolded herself and moved to the right, leading Bobi to the room that would be his own to work in.
He nodded with appreciation as he surveyed the room. The clean metal tables around the walls were the perfect height for standing and working without bending over. She had the facility administrators set up two stations to connect to the local database. The hardware of the facility was powerful enough to run several simultaneous simulations, and it was all interlinked to the other team on the project. No one could hide their work from the other team, a safeguard she had taken to circumvent the distrust the two teams would naturally have for each other. Despite these efforts, the first question out of Bobi’s mouth was, “Does the door lock?”.
“Yes. Why?”
“Because, I really don’t want to have to lug these back and forth between apartment and lab every day.” He waved at his wooden crates and immediately pulled them off the cart. He set the first down on a chair and opened the top.
It shocked Ayna to see him pull thick books out of it. He carefully placed them at the back of the tables, working his way around the room. She had never seen such beautiful leather-bound books in such pristine condition, let alone had any knowledge that Bobi owned such things. He filled up the tables against the longest wall and placed a few against the next wall before the boxes were empty. It was close to a hundred books. Without even knowing the contents, she knew that this was worth a fortune.
“You are always full of surprises, Bobi.”
“If these go missing, you will have to pay for them,” he said, as if they had a signed contract that bound her.
She chuckled, “I would hate to see them lost, but even if I could sell my house or belongings, it would barely cover the cost of these.” She stepped up to one and ran her fingers over the binding. “What are they?”
Bobi looked over at the books with a love like they were his children, “They are my life’s work. Collecting them was my father’s work, and then it became mine. When the Illara came through the gate to this world in the Sundering, there were hundreds of books on their world, the use of source, and their versions of technology. There are others left, besides these, but this collection is nearly eighty percent of what we know have survived.” Bobi flashed her a smile, “When this project makes me rich and famous, perhaps I will open a library. One where no one can touch the books.”
Ayna shook her head, “It’s incredible.”
A volume with strange symbols inlaid in the leather with a golden paint caught her eye, “May I?”
Bobi picked it up out of the line of books for her, laying it on the metal table and opening it to the middle. A feeling of awe came over her as she looked at each page, covered in strange runic markings and painted in various hues that shimmered like metal.
“Wow, that’s amazing. What does it say?”
Bobi shrugged, “It is an imprinted manuscript. I have a few books of them, but we don’t really know how to use them anymore. My father said that they helped Sourcemancers cast through multiple elements at the same time, but no Sourcemancers survived the Sundering, so we’ve never been able to use them or see how they work.”
Ayna wanted to run her hand over the page, but knew Bobi would be horrified. She touched the leather edges of the book with a gentle caress, “Shara is a Sourcemancer, you know. Maybe someday we can figure out how to use it.”
Bobi smiled at her, “I know she is. One favor at a time, though.”
The draft of her message back to Mars was never quite right. She looked over the ending, asking for their story for the past eighty years and how they’d managed this long. She removed it. It didn’t seem right to ask for it after telling whoever was there with the man who had communicated to them, Karim, that they were on their own. She re-read the draft and sent it over to Jo. So far, they had told no one of the communication, and Jo had agreed to handle talking back and forth. He had already introduced himself and informed them he was their new contact. Karim had sent back his own introduction, a message of surprise at the change, then immediately asked about about their resupply. The message was obvious: there could be no more postponing the truth. She had been working on the drafted response for days, tweaking and retooling words over and over, but time pressed too hard against their need and she knew it was time to send it.
As the screen shifted from her focused writing mode, she noticed she had received several new messages. None of them were actually for her.
Bobi is already busy, I see.
She glanced at the old clock that hung across from her desk and smiled at the hand pointing to 1. It had been a long night and it would be a longer morning with little sleep.
One message had been sent to his assistant, giving her directions to the lab and letting her know she would need to contact him to be let in until they had put her into the security system. The other message Ayna had certainly expected, but not on the first day he had access. He had pulled all the data that the other team had on the servers and sent it over to an Artificer contact. She didn’t recognize the name, but she would have time to investigate them tomorrow.
As she prepared to shut off her Tab and try to get some sleep, a
blink from the upper right notified her of a new message. She tapped on it, revealing a communique from Kingston.
Ayna,
I was at the U today, when you met with the Artificer and guided him to the labs you’ve blocked off for Blight Crystal research. I understand that you likely pulled researchers in from whomever was willing to take on the danger of testing source against an unknown element. However, I fear that involving the Artificers will not turn out well. They are a self-serving lot who cannot be trusted. If you need Source-casters who you can trust, there are several in Century who I could convince to help with the project.
She sighed and shut down her LightTab. Kingston’s concerns mirrored her own, but she wasn’t prepared to use Source-casters she did not know. I am going to need more than copies of what the Artificers send. Luckily, she knew the perfect woman to meet with in the morning. She leaned forward and pushed up from the desk; the tiredness adding to the weight of all the things she was balancing. Taking a moment to stretch before making her way through the dark home, she sauntered to bed, only to find Jo fast asleep with the light still on.
Ayna had known Dominna Furniss since she was just a girl. Now, here she was, standing on the worn rug in front of Ayna’s desk, robed in embroidered purple that would make many Illara twice her age jealous. Ayna was as proud of Dom as she was wary of her. Perhaps that she felt the need for wariness made Ayna even more proud. It was Ayna, after all, that had trained Dom in politics.
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