Claire shook her head. “Nothing. It’s—nothing.”
“That didn’t look like nothing,” McKenna said.
“It’s just—” Claire started. “That was my year, and I know we were in different professions, but still, I thought I would remember you. Unless—”
“Unless?” McKenna asked.
“Unless the forbidden magic did more than change a few things and erase our memories,” I finished for her.
“Who else was in your class?” Claire asked.
“Your buddy, Leon,” McKenna said, nodding to where Leon walked by himself.
“Wait,” I said. “You know Leon, and you didn’t say anything?”
“It’s not like he piped up either,” McKenna replied. “Besides, I didn’t know him very well. He disappeared about six months in. No one knows where he went. I thought he quit or was killed or something. But here he is. Didn't even recognize him at first when he showed up at the comm tower.”
Chet. “What does this all mean exactly?” I asked.
“Nothing… yet,” Claire replied. “All it means is that we don’t know what to expect of anyone or anything. I thought this would be easy—a blessing in disguise—identify past mistakes and fix them before they happen. But there are too many variables.”
“So, what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Well, I know what I’m doing, and we’re almost there,” McKenna added. “Let’s cut the chatter. There could still be Balgyrans about.”
I nodded, and Claire ran off, presumably to find Bella and bring her back into formation.
Before long, the trees fell away completely, and I found myself standing in what could be explained as little else than a wasteland.
McKenna held up a hand as she stepped forward and knelt down by a set of footprints in the dried mud.
As I looked around, the severity of the situation became apparent. The ground was torn up, the trees—or what was left of them—were blackened husks, and a massive rift ran through the middle of the land extending as far as the eye could see in any direction to the left or right.
Gouge was probably a better word, as it looked like Eton had raked his hands through the ground.
“What happened here?” I asked in awe, crouching next to McKenna.
“This is your war,” McKenna whispered.
As the last of the sun dipped below the horizon, the flashes of color and light along the length of the gouged land were made all the more apparent.
“People are still fighting here?”
“They never stop,” she answered.
“But the Balgyrans—they made it through our lines.”
McKenna shrugged. “It happens more often than we’d like, but the border is long and our numbers are few. We keep an eye on things from the towers,” she said, pointing to a tall structure situated at the edge of the gorge several hundred feet away, “but time works against us out here, and the Balgyrans build tunnels or find other access routes where we can’t see them.”
“I don’t see any towers on the other side,” I noted.
“The Balgyrans don’t need them.”
“And why is that?”
McKenna sighed. “Because our orders are strictly for defense. ‘Protect our lands, but don’t advance into Balgyran territory.’”
I opened my mouth to speak, but something caught her eye, and she went rigid. Lightning fast, she raced over to a spot in the dried mud a few paces away and ripped something metallic from the ground.
“What is it?” I asked.
She held up a small metal plate attached to bracelet. It looked a lot like Izaiah’s except it wasn’t on a necklace.
It was a military ID tag.
“It’s Trevon’s,” McKenna said. “He wouldn’t have dropped this on accident. He’s somewhere around here, and he's in trouble.”
“Let’s go then,” I said, starting to take off for the tower.
“Hold up,” McKenna called out. “The tracks lead away from the tower.”
“You think he’s been captured?” I asked as I observed the trail of footprints. There were easily five different sets.
“Or he’s being chased. Either way, I don’t like the prospects.”
As we started following the path, Claire, Bella, and Leon caught up with us.
“What made these footprints?” Bella asked.
“What do you mean, they’re human. Isn’t that obvious? Well, except for those,” I said, pointing to two columns of nearly round holes on either side of the other prints. “I don’t know what did that.”
Bella knelt down and pointed at the indentations. “This one is a perfect footprint the whole length, like the one who made it was either very slow, very heavy, or—”
“Or was carrying something,” Leon added.
Bella nodded. “That’s one possibility, but look at this one,” she said, pointing to another footprint—or half of one. “This is just the front of a shoe, and it goes on in the same manner as far as I can see.”
“So? That means the person was running. That supports McKenna’s theory of Trevon being chased,” I said.
“Maybe, but the stride isn’t right. The prints would be farther apart if this person were running.”
“So, what do you think this is?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know,” Bella said as she shrugged her shoulders.
“We’re going about this all wrong,” McKenna said. “We’re trying to reconcile this as a large group, but what if it’s five separate passings?”
“You mean like over the course of a couple of days?” I asked.
“That could be,” Bella answered. She pointed at two lighter sets of prints. “These ones are older, likely quite some time ago. But the other four are recent. It’s impossible to know when exactly, but if Trevon were being carried, then we are looking at the possibility of at least four assailants. And that’s even if Trevon is still alive.”
“He’s alive,” McKenna said.
“How can you know?” I asked.
“I just do, all right!” she spat through gritted teeth.
“Okay, he’s alive. Lead the way,” I said.
We followed the footprints for twenty minutes as they continued along the lip of the gorge and then down into a small gully that led to the bottom of the ravine. The massive walls of dirt on either side of us blocked out what little light there had been left in the sky.
The gorge had seemed impressive from the top, but it felt oppressive from the bottom. I wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but this came pretty close.
Unfortunately, as soon as we reached level ground, the footprints disappeared completely.
“Where do we go now?” Leon asked.
“Shh,” Bella said, holding up a finger as she knelt down and placed her ear on the ground.
“I didn’t know you were such a good tracker,” I remarked.
“Do you know what ‘shh’ means?” she snapped. After a brief moment, she stood and pointed to the east. “They’re that way.”
“You’re sure?” McKenna asked.
“Under normal circumstances, no,” Bella said.
McKenna sucked in air.
“But,” Bella continued, “since there are, literally, only two directions, I’m reasonably sure they went that way.” She gestured in the same direction again.
“This is Trevon’s life we’re talking about. Can you give me a little better than reasonably sure?”
“I’m pretty sure—I’m mostly sure they went that way,” Bella answered.
“Should we split up?” Leon asked.
“No,” I was quick to cut in. “This is no man’s land in the middle of a war zone. We stick together. And that also means you don’t go all invisible and chart off on your own, understood?”
Leon bit his lip, but nodded.
McKenna turned to the right and headed east. In some unspoken agreement, we all drew our weapons, likely sensing that we were getting close to finding
Trevon… and whoever was after him or had him.
From the ground floor of the gorge, it was immediately apparent that the giant valley wasn’t exactly a straight line like I’d originally thought. The wall of the gorge wended this way and that, sometimes widening the gap and other times narrowing so that only a single person could fit through at a time.
After making it through one such restricted path, McKenna and I found ourselves stepping into a wide-open expanse that contained the very obvious signs of a camp: bedrolls, sacks, and a still blazing campfire. McKenna turned back and held up a finger to her lips. Then she mouthed the words “wait here.”
I crouched down behind a makeshift boulder formed from a large chunk of earth that had fallen down from the lip of the gorge. Claire joined me, but both Bella and Leon were still stuck on the other side of the narrow passageway.
McKenna cautiously stepped out into the open.
She was nearly to the campfire when she screamed, “Trevon!”
I started to run after her when an ear-splitting shriek stopped me dead in my tracks.
Thirty-Five
I regained my composure and pressed out into the open after McKenna. The sight that lay before me caused my heart to skip a beat.
A woman, or what used to be a woman, was on all fours in front of a man tied to a wooden stake. I quickly noted her glaringly odd features: one of her eyes was glowing with a green light, a mixture of wet and dried blood was caked over her mouth and face, and bits of metal were embedded all over her body.
I tapped my neural link.
!@$%?$@#$@!
LEVEL 18
AFFILIATION: ??
PROFESSION: ??
Well, that’s great. It broke my scanner.
With a great leap the demon-woman lunged straight for McKenna. I dropped my bow and tore after her. Jumping over rocks, I grabbed McKenna’s waist and pulled her out of the way, both of us falling to the ground.
Flying over our position, the demon thing missed us, but still managed to land perfectly on its feet.
“Thanks,” McKenna grunted.
“What the—” Bella said as she came through the passage.
I didn’t waste another minute. My bow might have been lying across the way, but I had more at my disposal than just my handheld weapons. It was time to test out my magika upgrades.
Leveling my palm at the morphed woman, I tapped the Class 4 Fire stone.
A blast of magic lanced forth from my hand.
As it sped toward the woman, it fanned out into the shape of a bird and cawed—or at least I thought it did—then crashed into her chest before she could scramble away. The force of the blow picked the demon up off her feet and slammed her into the gorge wall.
“Whoa,” Bella said in awe.
The demon’s body lay in a crumpled heap where it fell, still smoking from the fire.
“Is it dead?” Leon asked.
“I’m not going near that thing to find out,” Claire replied.
I checked my stats to see if they increased.
LEVEL 26
210/260 MP
21,410/26,000 EXP
I didn’t level up, but my EXP had gone up a significant amount. So much so that the only probable solution was that the demon was dead.
As a bonus, I learned that a Class 4 power costs 50 MP.
“I’m pretty sure it’s gone,” I said.
That must have been all McKenna needed to hear because she turned and raced for Trevon like nothing else in the world mattered.
Drawing a dagger, she cut through the bindings, and his body slumped to the ground. McKenna dropped to her knees next to Trevon and cradled him in her arms.
“Come on, baby, wake up,” she said, giving him a gentle shake. “Trevon—Trev. It’s Charlotte. Can you hear me?”
Trevon groaned, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive—in pretty bad shape, but alive.
“Char? Is that you?” Trevon asked.
“It’s me, baby.”
“I—I knew you’d come,” he said through pained breaths. “Knew you’d—knew you’d find my clue.”
“What happened?” McKenna asked.
Trevon coughed. “They hit—without warning. Didn’t even show up on the—” he coughed again.
“It’s okay, take it easy.”
“Didn’t show up on the radar,” he finished.
“What? How?” Bella asked.
I heard a shuffling behind me and glanced over my shoulder to see Claire walking toward the body of the demon woman.
“What did they want with you, why capture you if they killed everyone else?” McKenna asked.
“I suppose they were saving me for dinner,” he answered. “They eat flesh. Preferably living.”
“Chet,” Claire said behind me.
I spun around to see her standing over the demon woman. “What is it?”
“Cybers,” she said, as if I was supposed to know what that meant.
“Come again?” I asked.
“Cybernetic organisms,” Claire explained. “You were the first successful robotic implant, but before that came many hundreds of failures. Each individual’s body reacts differently to the process, but in every case, the mental and physical stress of the transplant caused the subject to go insane. Some theorize that the process actually altered the genetic make-up of the brain.”
“You’re saying that’s what that thing is?” I asked.
“You killed them?” Trevon asked.
“Sure did,” I declared proudly, puffing out my chest. “It wasn’t too hard; it only took a single blow.”
Trevon’s eyes fell on the body of the cyber, then he began frantically looking around. “Where are the others?”
“The others?” I asked. “What others? There was only this one.”
“No, no, no,” Trevon muttered under his breath. “We have to get out of here, now.” Trevon tried to stand but winced in pain as he put weight on his leg.
Dashing over, I helped McKenna lift him up. Just as he got his bearings, an earthquake shook the ground and then was over a split second later.
Confused looks filled the faces all around me. Before I could voice my concern, another mini-tremor rumbled through the gorge. And then another.
“Run!” Trevon shouted, but it was too late.
A great hulking beast stepped out of a cave in the cliff wall. It stood a foot taller than the tallest man I’d ever seen. Its great muscled chest was bare before us with dark blue lines branching every which way across it. But its most distinguishable features were the thick metal arms and legs connected to its body.
I guess we know what caused those deeper footprints.
Next to the man was a gangly creature that didn’t stand quite straight and had long, spindly hair and feral eyes.
The hulking cyber bellowed, and the deep sound that ushered forth shook me to my bones.
My neural link dinged as it finished analyzing the beast.
!@$%?$@#$@!
LEVEL 53
AFFILIATION: ??
PROFESSION: ??
Then the words changed in front of my eyes, as if the neural device synced with my brain after processing Claire’s words.
CYBER BRUTE
LEVEL 64
AFFILIATION: BALGYRA
PROFESSION: NONE
Well, chet.
I looked at his buddy next.
CYBER WRAITH
LEVEL 32
AFFILIATION: BALGYRA
PROFESSION: NONE
At least that one seemed within reason. But this wasn’t going to be easy.
For a long moment, neither the brute nor the wraith made any attempt to attack. They just stood there, staring at us, which I found to be unnerving.
“What’s the plan, here?” I asked through the side of my mouth, not wanting to move a muscle in case it incited the cybers. “Should we run?”
Trevon whispered, “No, the little one may not seem like much, but it’s crazy fast. You’ll never
escape it. The big one is slow and lumbering. It won’t be too difficult to avoid, but watch out, it can chuck things a great distance.”
Unfortunately, Leon must not have heard our conversation because he immediately ran for cover. His intention was apparent to me—he wasn’t trying to get away, just find a better position to fight from, but that’s not how the cyber saw it.
The gangly cyber reared up and raced through the gorge quicker than a cheetah across an open savannah.
Claire was ready for it, though, and brought her sword to bear before it even got close to Leon. The wraith raised a metal arm and blocked her blow.
The flurry of movement caused the brute to roar and pound its chest, then it lumbered off to the cliff face and tore a chunk of earth straight out of the gorge wall. A moment later, it grunted as it threw its make shift weapon.
The only problem—well, not the only, but definitely a significant drawback—was that it was nearly dusk at this point, and visibility was almost nil aside from a small amount of light cast off by the flickering of the fire. Without fully knowing where the boulder was headed, we all scattered.
Trevon must have gotten a burst of adrenaline because he had no problem dodging without either McKenna's or my assistance.
The ground trembled as the boulder hit where we'd just been standing, but I had no time to dwell on how close I’d come to becoming a pancake. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Bella had engaged the wraith, and Leon was firing shots of magic from behind his cover.
I had to trust they had the situation well in hand as I turned my attention back to the brute.
When McKenna had lunged to the side, it had put her in range of the brute, and instead of ripping another hunk of rock out of the wall, he went straight for her.
Thankfully, Trevon was correct, and its swing was wide and slow, giving McKenna ample time to jump over it and put her rifle in its face. She pulled the trigger, and a blast of light lanced forward and slammed into the brute’s cheek.
It roared and raised its other hand in time to block a second attack from McKenna.
With its eyes shielded, it took another swing at her, but she jumped easily out of harm's way.
Sworn Guardian: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (Forbidden Magic Book 1) Page 26