Looming Shadow: Journey to Chaos book 2 (6 page)

“I'm almost home and
would like to sleep, but these men here, the deck shall keep! Mana Cage!”

 He reversed his staff
and slammed the crystal on the deck. A magic charge raced towards them and a
light-screen arose on all sides, caging them.

“If you do a crime,
prepare to face my rhyme.”

Eric gazed at the
crystal with battle lust. He'd never been able to handle so many enemies at
once. After all this time carefully conserving his mana, it was exhilarating
to finally cut loose!

One more figure
appeared out of the wreckage. This one was no older than Eric himself and
dressed in robes instead of armor. He pointed at the cage and a cloud of
ethereal and eldritch light negated all three spells. All of them stood up and
charged him once again. Eric cast the Stun Gun, but the mysterious figure
pointed again and dispelled it before it reached them. Eric thought of another
spell, dismissed it, and simply fired a mana beam.

Channeled through both
his staff and crystal, the effect was greatly magnified and crashed into them
like a rhino. One by one, it punctured their barriers and knocked them out.
When the last reached Eric himself, he glared at him with Evil Eye. While they
were hardened slave runners, they didn’t have nearly his degree of
self-loathing and unadulterated fear. He froze him in his tracks and knocked
him out with the butt of his staff.

“A battle mage with a
black staff and red hair,” the boy in robes mused. “There’s something important
about that…now I wish I paid attention to that last lesson…”

“Winged Feet!”

A pair of transparent
wings appeared at Eric’s heels and he jumped forward with his spear cocked. He
effortlessly cleared the downed warriors on his way toward their backer. The
boy frantically threw up a barrier and shouted, “VETO!”

A second barrier
encased the boy. It was the same eldritch light that negated Eric’s spells. Now
it negated the force of his thrust. The crystal blade struck the barrier but
did not crack it or even impact. It simply stopped on contact. The boy smirked
nastily.

“Idiot. You can’t touch
me. No one can. Not when I have Order’s hand on my head!”

Eric slashed, stabbed,
and bashed the orderfied barrier, but it negated all of his force. He cast
spells of all the elements he knew and all of them disappeared on contact with
it. He tried a beam of pure mana and it was absorbed.

“Right back at ya,
loser!”

The orderfied barrier
concentrated the stolen mana and fired it at Eric. It cut through his barrier
and slammed into his stomach hard enough to knock the wind from him. Eric was
forced to lean on his staff for support. The boy fist-pumped triumphantly.

“Ha ha! And those old
farts said my training was incomplete. I’m already strong enough to beat
mages.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Now I’ll take over your mind
and add you to our stock. A sellstaff is sure to be easy.”

A hatch opened near him
and an orc stepped out of it. Seven or eight feet tall and broad with muscles,
he cast a shadow over the ordercrafter like
Flying Whale
did to
Albatross
IX
. Despite the cold, he wore short pants and short sleeves with only a
jacket to ward off the chill. Even his head was as exposed to the elements as
the rest of him because it was truly bald. The boy wet himself under the orc’s
stern glare, but then he put on a show of bravado.

“You can’t hurt me
either, you dumb brute!”

The orc gently placed
his hand on the kid’s orderfied barrier. He didn’t try to break it. The boy’s
knees knocked despite his taunts and barbs.

“Those who are
empowered by Order the First Born are feeble before Lady Chaos the Matriarch.
In her name, bow down.”

Like flipping a switch,
the second layer disappeared and the boy was left with his personal barrier.
His shiver had nothing to do with the cold. The hand passed through his barrier
and landed on his head. It was big enough to encompass his head entirely.

“That was a basic
anti-ordercraft spell. If you completed your training, it wouldn’t have worked
on you. Now you’re dead.” To Eric, he asked, “You all right? Civilians
shouldn't be here.”

“
Mercenary
. Be grateful
I'm not charging for this.” He pointed his staff at the outlaw and braced
himself. The impact made him grit his teeth, but his barrier successfully
defended them both from a stray missile. “Or that.”

“A mercenary, huh?” the
outlaw said. He removed his hand. “Then you shouldn’t have any problem with his
Tuhjso
now that he’s lost his benefactor.”

The boy did nothing but
raise his personal barrier, which Eric pierced without difficulty. Swinging his
weapon around, he bashed his opponent in the head with the shaft of his staff.
The boy went down. Eric righted his staff and brought it down on his opponent’s
exposed throat. The boy coughed and muttered about how he wished he’d completed
his training.

“You can’t stay on your
feet; go to sleep! Thunder slumber!”

An electric charge
surrounded the boy’s head and his eyes closed. Eric kicked him in a few places,
like the stomach and groin, to make sure he was asleep. Then he searched his
pockets. He found an opened packet of gum, a wallet with nothing in it but an
Official Liclis Ordercrafter License, and a key ring with twenty identical keys
on it.

The orc chuckled. “You
really are a mercenary.”

By now, the slavers
that Eric wiped out with his mana beam were coming too. The orc stepped between
them and Eric, and in the process, stepped on and crushed the sleeping
ordercrafter’s head.

“But you lack the
killer instinct to succeed at the job. Orc Law Number 0: Resist Order at all
times and thwart him whenever possible.”

None of them dared get
within arm’s reach, so instead, they fired mana bolts, which bounced off his
barrier like spit wads. His personal spirit was simply that powerful. One of
them cast a spell that generated lightning and fired like a bolt out of heaven.
He grabbed it, spun around, and threw it right back. The enemy mage dropped
dead on the spot, his body sizzling.

The orc showed all his
teeth and declared, “I’ll grind your bones to make my bread!”

 The rest dropped their
weapons and raced for the sides of the ship, slipping and sliding all the way.
When they reached the railing, they jumped off.

The orc laughed out loud.
“We got droppers!”

A crewmate fired a
hydraulic hand out of
Flying Whale's
hull and grabbed the falling
slavers. Then it tossed them into the
Whale's
mouth. “Waste not, want
not, right?” He nudged Eric and the human was knocked off his feet. “Sorry; forgot
you were a soft-skin.”

“Nayr!” 

Both human and orc
raised their heads to see a small girl with butterfly wings floating down from
the crow's nest.
As she descended, a screen of light flickered from the
tower and five of the deck's turrets. She landed on Nayr's bulky arm and pried
his hands open, revealing second-degree burns.

“You may have hard skin,
but you need to stop chucking lightning!”

“You need to go to the
infirmary,” the orc said, closing his fist. She pushed it back open and spread
a stinky green cream over it. “Stop that. You're needed more there.”

“If I don't treat it
now, it'll get infected, and you'll be no help to anyone,” the fairy countered,
“Stop acting like a tough guy.”

Another stray missile
hit him square in the back, but he didn’t do anything but grunt.

“It’s not an act.”

The fairy groaned. “See
what I have to work with? I'm Tolv Skycrest, guardian of
Flying Whale
.
Thank you for helping my partner.”

She jumped to the other
arm and Nayr reluctantly opened his fist.

“Eric Watley, novice of
the Dragon's Lair. Pleased to meet you.”

Eric shook hands with
her.

“I'm Nayr Oceanseal,
raider of
Flying Whale
.”

Eric offered his hand
and Nayr showed him the gunk on his own. Eric awkwardly retracted.

“For future reference,
a guy like you shouldn’t fight ordercrafters. Orc Wisdom #3: A strong orc
recognizes when he is weak.” 

“You should take your
own advice,” Tolv muttered, crawling up his arm and pulling herself up by his
ear. “Idiot.”

Nayr retaliated by
shaking his head. She held on by said ear until he stopped, then took her place
on his bald crown. Eric felt a warm spot building in his heart.

They're like a
younger version of Laharg and Malize
.

While Eric and the orc
dealt with the ordercrafter on the deck of the
Flying Whale
, the
“cleaner fish” chased the enemy mother ship.  

Its engines blazed blue
light and fire as it desperately tried to outrace the much larger ship. Its
escort ships formed a different sort of barrier by engaging the cleaner fish in
dogfights. They darted back and forth over the sea in brutal combat. Slashing
with mechanical claws at melee range and then hammering with tempered barriers,
they strove to knock each other below for the creatures of the deep. From a
distance, they shredded enemy fuselages with spell charges. The cleaner fish
broke through the slaver’s ships and
Flying Whale
closed in on its prey.
 

Suddenly, the slaver’s
exhaust flared golden-brown and the ship rapidly accelerated. The cleaner fish
couldn’t keep up. They fell further and further behind as their bounty pulled
away.

“All hands, brace
yourselves!” blared an intercom. “This is going to get rough!”

Inside the bridge,
Raguc lifted his left hand above his head and his tattoo glowed. The griffin
symbol projected itself on the open sky, and the griffin inside the seal raised
its right claw and cawed. In response, a tremendous gust of wind blew over the
deck and
Flying Whale
lurched forward.

The air ahead of them
was hazy with golden-brown smoke. The cleaner fish avoided this chaotic exhaust
by flying around it, but
Flying Whale
dived straight through. A series
of barriers activated over the ship as it entered the cloud until the ship was
doubly encompassed. Eric activated his own to be safe.
This stuff could be
worse than a garden-variety mana cloud. I don’t want to take any chances with
this stuff.

There were
things
in this cloud; airborne creatures that appeared to drift in and out of reality.
Their physical bodies constantly shifted in every conceivable way. Looking at
them made Eric’s eyes sting and his head throb. Their otherworldly noises made
his ears hurt. Despite all the barriers, they put terror in Eric’s heart. A
minute later,
Flying Whale
exited the cloud and saw the mother ship they
were tailing steadily lose altitude. It was being ravaged by its own engines.

Limbs of varying
substance had grown out of the engines and now they flailed erratically,
damaging the ship and each other. A deep-throated laugh boomed through the
intercom.

“Crew of
Flying
Whale
, prepare to feast!”

The ship opened its
great mouth and put on a burst of speed. The slaver mother ship dropped faster
and so the
Whale
dived to meet it at the water. A gust of wind appeared
out of nowhere to propel it backwards and into the maw of the outlaw’s ship.
Then its jaws closed around it.

Inside, the outlaws
scrambled to kill the monster growing out of the slaver ship’s engines. Kallen
raced to take part, but an orc was already there, doing the bulk of the work.
He slashed off limbs, shielded his crewmates, and utilized a mysterious power
out of his right hand. It glowed with eldritch light and warped the area around
his hand. By pointing at the engine, he used it to inhibit the engine monster’s
growth.

Kallen drove in anyway
and struck an exhaust port with her crystal. At once, the chaotic energy left
the engine and dove into her crystal and into the grey light inside. It flashed
golden-brown and a same color aura appeared around Kallen herself. She put her
left hand between her eyes and muttered, “Chaos is with me.”

The aura vanished and
the grey light dimmed. Without its chaotic power, the engine monster stopped
growing and ceased mutating. The orc delivered the killing blow, then turned to
her, and said, “Thanks, soft-skin.”

“You’re welcome,
violent brute.”

The orc then tore open
the door to the ship and led the following raid. They found enemies and killed
or captured them, depending on the level of resistance they encountered. The
captain was a little harder to bring down, but he was ultimately cuffed all the
same. All the captives were then marched out and thrown at the feet of Captain
Raguc. The whole excursion took only ten minutes.

“Give me the
subjugation collar keys.”

“I don’t have them,”
the defeated captain replied.

Raguc kicked him in the
gut. “You have a
Bodin
class fighter carrier, a full complement of
fighters, and a very nice suit. Therefore, you can’t be run-of-the-mill
slavers; you have to be
elfin
slavers. If you’re elfin slavers, then you
have to use subjugation collars to keep your cargo under control, which means
you must have keys.”

“Captain Raguc!” an outlaw
shouted from inside the slaver mothership. “We’ve cracked the cargo bay!
They’re coming out now.”

She gestured out the
door and twenty elves walked out. Every one of them wore dirty black tunics
that never reached beyond mid-thigh and red-gold
orichalcum
collars
that covered their necks entirely. Runes written into the later glowed faintly
with the same light used to subdue the engine monster. It was the same power
used by the anti-mage Eric fought. It was ordercraft.

“Keys, please.”

“I don’t have them.”
Raguc placed his cutlass next to the man’s neck. “Really, I don’t! I’m not an
ordercrafter! I can’t use them.”