by Clayton Wood
“Locked,” Kalibar murmured. He shook his head in frustration. “I still can't weave any magic,” he added. He turned to Kyle. “What do you have left?”
“Not much,” Kyle admitted. Kalibar grunted, lowering Ariana from his shoulder. He sat her down on the landing before the door, propping her against the wall. Her head lolled to one side, her eyes still open, staring blankly ahead. Kyle frowned, peering closely at her; her forehead was glowing with the faintest of blue lights. He frowned, stepping backward, and realized that subtle rays were shooting from the walls and the floor – even the metal door – and were coalescing at Ariana's forehead.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Kalibar,” Kyle whispered, pointing at Ariana. “Look!”
Kalibar stared down at Ariana, then gasped, crouching beside her. He put a hand on her cheek, patting it gently but firmly. Ariana's eyes fluttered again, then opened, her pupils slowly converging on Kalibar.
“I think she needs magic,” Kyle guessed.
“What are you talking about?” Goran asked. “What's wrong with her?”
“Kyle's right, she needs magic,” Kalibar answered. Goran looked ready to ask another question, but Kalibar cut him off. “Go ahead Kyle,” he urged.
Kyle nodded, closing his eyes and pulling magic into the center of his mind's eye. At first nothing happened, what little free magic he had still being streamed to his light. But he pulled harder, sensing the magic slowly building within the bones of his skull, so close yet so difficult to access. A thread appeared, and Kyle pushed it toward Ariana's forehead.
Ariana's eyes widened, and she gasped.
Ariana!” Kyle blurted out, shaking her slender shoulders. She turned her eyes toward him, but not her head. He grasped desperately for more magic, thrusting what little he could toward her. Ariana's leg jerked, then her arms, and she gasped again, turning her head to face Kyle.
“What...” she mumbled. Then she groaned, clenching her fists, then relaxing them. “Where am I?”
“You fell asleep,” Kalibar answered, glancing at Goran, then turning back to Ariana. “We need you to do something for us.” Ariana nodded, rising slowly to her feet. Kyle shoved the last bit of magic he had at her, then rose to stand at her side, putting all of his weight on his good ankle.
“What?” she asked.
“Can you open this door?” Kalibar asked, pointing to the heavy metal door. Ariana turned to it, then shrugged noncommittally.
“I'll try.”
“Are you joking?” Goran asked incredulously. “That thing is made of solid metal,” he added. Kalibar didn't respond, nodding at Ariana, who stepped up to the door, putting her delicate fingers on the metal knob. She pulled, but nothing happened. She glanced at Goran, then at Kalibar.
“It's okay,” Kalibar encouraged. “Go ahead.”
Ariana nodded, turning back to the door, her fingers curling around the knob, the muscles of her forearm tensing. The knob dented inward slightly under her grasp, the metal creaking under the strain. There was a sudden cracking sound, and the knob snapped, falling off the door and striking the stone landing with a loud clang. She ignored this, reaching her hand through the hole the knob had left, then pulling. The door creaked, the metal bending inward toward her. There was a snap, and the door swung inward, Ariana nearly falling backward down the stairs in the process. She managed to hang on, slamming her back into the wall to the side.
Goran stared at her, his jaw slack.
“Come on,” Kalibar prompted, smirking at the Councilman. But instead of opening up into a hallway or room, there was a stone wall behind the door.
“Wait,” Goran exclaimed. “What's a wall doing here?”
“Ariana, can you get us through this?” Kalibar asked. “We don't have any magic.” Ariana stared at the wall skeptically. Then she turned about and ran down the stairs. A moment later, there was a loud clanging noise. Ariana returned shortly thereafter, a long metal pole in her hands. It was, Kyle realized, the metal bar he'd tripped on earlier. Everyone stepped back, giving Ariana plenty of room to work, and she slammed the butt of the pole into the stone, breaking off a small chunk of mortar. She struck again, then again, the ear-splitting racket forcing Kyle to cover his ears with his hands. Dust and pieces of rock flew all around her, forcing everyone else back down the stairwell. After a few minutes, the noise stopped, and Ariana's pale face peeked out from the stairway.
“Come on,” she urged.
Kalibar and Goran ran up the stairs, followed by Kyle. A hole had been made in the wall, revealing a long corridor beyond. Kalibar squeezed through the hole, Goran and Kyle and Ariana following close behind. Kalibar cast his light forward into the hallway ahead; the walls were stone again, but this time they were interrupted at regular intervals by long rows of vertical metal bars some seven feet high. Kalibar walked down the hallway slowly, gesturing for Goran to follow him. Ariana grabbed Kyle's hand, and he leaned on her, favoring his left ankle while following the two men. They passed one of the rows of metal bars, and Kyle peered beyond them, seeing several small, rectangular rooms.
“My god,” Kalibar whispered, lowering his light to get a better look inside one of the rooms.
“What?” Goran asked, visibly tensing. Kalibar shook his head, turning away from the room.
“Of course,” he mumbled, shaking his head slowly. “It's so obvious now.”
“What?” Goran pressed. Kalibar turned to Goran, his brown eyes glittering in the dim light coming from above.
“This is how they broke out,” Kalibar answered, gesturing at the barred rooms all around them. “They were right underneath us...literally...all this time!”
“Who?” Goran blurted, clearly exasperated.
“We're in the middle of the city,” Kalibar explained. “...right above the evacuation tunnels, of all things.” He shook his head, a rueful smile twisting his lips. “If we live through this, remind me to strangle our city planner.”
“I'm about to strangle you,” Goran muttered under his breath. But Kalibar ignored the comment, turning back to Kyle and Ariana.
“We need to keep moving,” he stated, walking back to the hole they'd come through and inspecting it carefully. “If that Void sphere doesn't circle back and come for us, the escaped prisoners certainly will. And if they're smart, they'll search for us here.”
“And where is here?” Goran nearly shouted. Kalibar said nothing, but pointed to a series of symbols carved in the stone above hole in the wall. Kyle couldn't read it, of course, but Goran's face immediately paled, his jaw dropping. Kyle frowned, turning to Ariana.
“What does it say?” he whispered.
“Stridon Penitentiary,” she replied.
Chapter 25
The hallways of Stridon Penitentiary were long and somber, the walls and floors a dull gray under the light that Kyle levitated above their heads. According to Kalibar, they were in the sub-basement of the enormous building complex, an abandoned floor once used for now-banned experiments on prisoners waiting for the death penalty. Unlike on Earth, where responsible adults would never delve into the details of such things with children, Kalibar quite enthusiastically recalled the history of horrifying acts committed only a few decades before. The Ancients had not allowed human experimentation without consent, but it had taken a while for the new Empire to abandon its less savory habits. That being said, Kyle still recalled the prisoners who had died while Kalibar had his ring tested; apparently necessity outweighed other considerations when it came to the greater good.
In any case, the door to the abandoned floor had been long ago locked and mortared over, only a nondescript wall left in its place. The prisoners who'd escaped must have taken down the wall, dug a hole right down into the evacuation tunnels, and then made their way up to the Tower...all the while covering their escape route by recreating the wall. An ingenious plan, indeed.
The four of them continued down the hallway, Kyle putting more and more weight on his injured ankle as he went. It st
ill hurt, but he was able to walk without assistance now. Eventually they made it to a dark, dusty staircase at the end of a long series of hallways, one that took them to the basement level. Not much different from the lower floor, this one held row upon row of barred cells stretching into the distance. Curiously, all of the magical lights on the walls and ceiling were out.
“They're all fed by massive magic storage crystals below-ground,” Kalibar explained, leading the others down the hallway. “A network of crystals, actually. If one is drained, others are supposed to take over...the fact that all of the lights are out means that the entire network has been drained.”
“Impossible,” Goran retorted. “There's enough magic in those depots to last a year!”
“And yet...” Kalibar countered, gesturing at the darkness around them.
“Where are all the prisoners?” Kyle asked. Indeed, all of the cells they'd come across had been empty.
“Good question,” Kalibar replied. “Only a few cell blocks were freed during the jailbreak last week...about eighty prisoners in all. This building alone holds six hundred, and the debtor's prison building holds two hundred.”
“We've passed more than a few cell blocks,” Goran observed, glancing about nervously. Kalibar nodded, frowning at one of the cells nearby. The bars had been bent to either side, forming an opening large enough for a man to squeeze through.
“We should be cautious,” he advised. Then he turned to Kyle. “Kyle, lend me your magic, if you would.”
“Wait, how did they bend the bars if all the magic got sucked out?” Kyle asked. He streamed magic toward Kalibar, giving the Grand Weaver what little he had left.
“The prisoners in this building were all Weavers and Runics,” Kalibar explained. “The most dangerous criminals of all. The magic powering the prison's security systems was drained, but that doesn't mean the prisoners were.
“Great,” Goran mumbled.
“Better give me your magic too,” Kalibar told the Councilman. Goran did so; no matter what the man's opinion of Kalibar as Grand Weaver, there was no denying that Kalibar was the best equipped to defend them.
“There's no one alive on this floor,” Ariana stated, walking at Kyle's side. Kalibar turned to her, a frown on his face.
“You can tell?”
“Yes,” she affirmed. “I...uh, have really good hearing.”
“And remarkable strength,” Goran added, turning to Kalibar. “How is that, Kalibar?”
“A gift from the same man who gave me my eyes back,” Kalibar answered, smiling at Ariana. “Impressive, eh?”
“Hardly,” Goran retorted. “This all-powerful being gives you eyes and gives her super-strength, all the while doing nothing while the city burns?”
“I don't pretend to understand him,” Kalibar admitted. Goran rolled his eyes, stalking off down the hallway. Kalibar sighed, walking behind the disgruntled Councilman, mumbling something under his breath. Kyle turned to Ariana, leaning toward her ear.
“What'd he say?” he whispered.
“He said he didn't understand why he'd betray the Empire again,” Ariana replied with a shrug. Kyle stared at Ariana, then at Kalibar's back, his eyes widening. Wait, did Kalibar know about...? He felt his heart skip a beat. Had Darius told the Grand Weaver? No, it wasn't possible.
Wait, where was the bodyguard, anyway?
Kyle frowned, realizing that Darius had been gone for hours now. Where had the man been while they'd all been struggling for dear life? Or when Urson had faced those Void spheres? Kyle still remembered the screams of the dying, the blood spattering the lobby. For a man with seemingly unlimited power, Darius had done nothing to stop the wholesale carnage...which either meant that he had no idea it was happening, or that he let it happen anyway. Either way, it didn't bode well for any of them now.
“All the cell bars are broken here,” Goran observed. Kyle realized the surly Councilman was right. Not one of the cells was occupied, and the bars were bent similarly to the first one they'd seen.
“Do you hear anything, Ariana?” Kalibar asked. Ariana paused, then shook her head.
“Nothing in here,” she answered. “Nothing outside, either,” she added. Goran frowned.
“You can hear outside?”
“Sort of,” she replied. “It's hard to explain.”
“Let's keep going,” Kalibar interjected, pointing to a staircase ahead. “This should bring us up to the first floor, and into the city streets.” He turned to Goran. “Urson said he would have his men evacuate Erasmus, but there's no telling whether or not they were successful.” He paused at the foot of the staircase, taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly. “My Battle-Weavers went out into the city to retrieve the surviving Council members. With the Tower under siege, they'll have no safe place to convene.”
“And they'll go into the Tower unwittingly,” Goran added grimly. “Which means we either go back to warn them, or we leave them to die.”
“If we go back, we risk our own deaths,” Kalibar countered.
“And then no one in the Empire will realize that Xanos can do to anyone what he did to Ibicus,” Goran concluded. “If we die, Xanos will destroy the Empire outright, or create puppets out of any future elected leaders.”
“And we can't exactly send a courier to tell them,” Kalibar muttered. “No one would believe it from anyone but us.” He shook his head, running a hand through his short white hair. “But I can't just let Erasmus – or the Council – die.” He turned back to Goran, his tone firm. “I'll go back to the Tower, try to find some Battle-Weavers and fight. You take Kyle and Ariana...build up your magic reserves, then use your gravity boots to escape the city. Fly to Eastport.”
“Eastport?” Goran asked. Kalibar nodded.
“As you said, evacuation will give us time,” he reasoned. “The Tower is lost, for better or worse. Our only hope now is to make a stand elsewhere, and Spero is too obvious a choice.”
“No,” Goran countered.
“What?”
“I'm not going,” Goran clarified.
“It's a suicide mission,” Kalibar protested, but Goran cut him off.
“This has always been a losing battle, Kalibar,” he stated. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “We were always going to lose,” he added firmly. “The only person who believed we had a chance was you, Kalibar...the entire Council thought you were crazy.”
“Well thanks,” Kalibar grumbled.
“That's why we nominated you,” Goran continued. “Unanimously, remember? Half of us didn't like you, or agree with what you did in your first term as Grand Weaver, but we all knew that you were the best Battle-Weaver we'd ever seen. The most reckless and most daring, mind you, but also the most successful. You made a habit of winning handily despite impossible odds, and we needed your kind of crazy if we were to stand a chance.”
“Well,” Kalibar mumbled. For the first time since Kyle had met the man, he appeared to be at a loss for words. Goran smirked.
“Don't let it get to your head,” he added. “I still think you're an imperialistic, morally suspect Populist.” He sighed, uncrossing his arms. “The point is, we're all dead men, whether we stay or run. I've spent the last dozen mornings watching the sunrise, wondering if each would be my last...living in fear. I'd rather die fighting than die running.”
“Okay,” Kalibar decided. “Then we fight.” He turned to Ariana.
“I'm not afraid of death anymore,” Ariana stated. “But I am afraid of living in fear. I'm fighting.”
“Kyle?” Kalibar asked. Kyle took a deep breath in, lowering his gaze to the floor. He wished he could be as steadfast as Ariana and Goran, but the truth was, he still wanted to live. He wanted to go home – back to Earth – and see his parents again. But he couldn't do that knowing he had abandoned his friends to die. Life with that kind of regret wouldn't be worth living.
“I'm in,” he stated.
“All right then,” Kalibar replied. “We stay and fight. But we
need to be smart about it. The city is overrun with those Void spheres, and we know we don't stand a chance against them...so we need to avoid them.”
“We could fly above the city,” Goran offered, but Kalibar shook his head.
“Too risky,” he countered. “Their magical vacuum will take us right out of the sky if they find us.” He frowned then, stroking his goatee. “Those Void spheres seem to sense magic...I think that's why the last one followed the Battle-Weavers and not us. We'd already been drained, but the Battle-Weavers hadn't.”
“But we need magic,” Goran protested.
“We can disguise ourselves,” Kalibar offered. All heads turned to him.
“Like hats and fake mustaches?” Goran asked snidely. Kalibar smirked.
“No, like dirt,” he corrected. Goran frowned.
“How is dirt going to disguise us from those things?” he asked.
“Normally it wouldn't,” Kalibar answered. “Every rock and clump of dirt in the city was saturated with magic...but with those Void spheres absorbing all of the magic around the city...”
“Ahhh, I see,” Goran exclaimed. “That's brilliant, Kalibar!”
“What is?” Kyle asked.
“Almost everything in the world makes magic,” Kalibar explained. “Normally, dirt and rocks – minerals in nature – are saturated with magic. So if you covered yourself in such dirt, excess magic produced by your mind would still leak out past it. But if the dirt were depleted of magic...”
“Then it would absorb any excess radiation, no matter how slight,” Goran added. “We'd be effectively invisible, at least for a while.”
“Ohhh,” Kyle breathed. “But wait, aren't we depleted now? Our bones should do the same thing...absorb any excess magic.”
“Until our skulls become saturated,” Kalibar countered. “After that, magic has to travel through tissue to get to our spine...and tissue is terrible at holding on to magic. Leaking will occur.”
“Got it,” Kyle replied. “So we cover ourselves in dirt from outside, and then what?”
“Then we get information,” Kalibar answered. “Find a Battle-Weaver, determine the status of the Council and Erasmus if we can, and travel back to the Tower if we can't.”