Rise of Shadows (38 page)

Phoenix, for his part, pressed a counter-attack and sent more waves of fire their way. I noticed that he was relying on the power stored in his staff to keep up his attack and knew it would not last long enough for me to get the tear closed. We needed a new plan, and needed it fast.

“
Darius, we need backup in here,
” I sent.

Almost instantly Darius appeared and started channeling the lighting from the room into the shields of the sorcerers. This took a lot of pressure off Phoenix, who was straining just to keep the shields up from the attack, never mind trying to counter-attack.

“
Just a few more minutes is all I need,”
I sent.

“
You’ll have it, Master,
” sent Darius.

I kept working at the bands of power that were in place. I was pretty confident that I only needed to remove one more band to complete the task. I was growing very worried, though, as I lost all touch with Spectra and Dusty. I simply could not sense them at all anymore.

As the fight around me pressed on, I could sense Phoenix’s shielding begin to collapse. The sorcerers kept their attacks focused on me, regardless of how hard Darius pushed the counter-attack.

“
Master
Phoenix, give up your attack and focus on the shields. Shadow must not fall. I’ll keep the pressure on them,”
sent Darius.

“
Okay,
” sent Phoenix, whose weariness was becoming more and more apparent.

Darius moved between us and the sorcerers, continuing to bend the lightning in the room around himself and back at the sorcerers. They soon learned that they could not ignore his attacks and just focus on me, as another one of them fell to the lightning. Darius was in his element here and, as such, was a force to be reckoned with. Lightning continuously arced from the tear to him, and then arced off him to the sorcerers. He drew all the power in the room on to himself as yet another sorcerer fell to his attacks, leaving only two.

As each sorcerer fell, he was able to direct more and more power into his attacks, and now with only two targets left to direct all the lightning in the room on, he was able to wield a power far greater than necessary, and it completely devastated the next target, leaving only one sorcerer.

Before that battle could be joined, I finally got the last band of power off the tear, and it collapsed upon itself. Once the tear was closed, the massive lightning storm ended, and Darius was left without enough power to press his attack. The sorcerer took advantage of this lapse and cast his own attacks directly at Darius. Darius flew through space in the chamber and slammed hard against the wall.

Then before I could react, a bolt of power reached out and hit Phoenix, blasting him from my side and towards a wall at high speed.

“Enough!” I called out and reached out with my power to catch Phoenix before he hit the wall. I then opened a gate by Darius and pushed them both through. I sent them to the Dust Dragon where Shea and Leslie could tend to them.

I then turned my attention on the sorcerer, who was casting a summoning spell. While he did that, I reached out and drew in the power that was still in pools around the room, the power that had not had time to flow back into the spirit realm, and struck him with it. The blow sent him flying from his perch and interrupted his spell before it could be completed.

The long hard fight with the tear had drained most of my reserves, and I felt my strength leaving me. I knew I needed to act fast or I would be overcome. As he fell backwards on to a platform below, I pulled out two of Shea’s potions and tossed them both at him. The resulting explosion ripped a hole through the heavy metal walls of the chamber and destroyed a section of the corridor behind it. There was not much more than a smear left to represent where the mighty sorcerer once was.

It was then that I remembered the other potions that Shea had given me, and I pulled out the illuminescence potion and chugged it. As its warm power passed over my body, I felt my clarity of mind return and my stores of magical power partly recharge. I was still physically weary, but I could deal with that later.

“
Flame, what is our status?”
I sent.

“
Shadow, Phoenix is going to be all right, but we might have lost Darius. Leslie is doing all she can for him
,” she sent back.

For the first time in I do not know how many years, I screamed out a curse of frustration.
“Was he able to take the station’s power core offline?
” I asked. I dared not ask about Spectra and Dusty. We still had a battle to win.

“
No, the shields are still up, but they are weakened,”
she sent.

“
Get the Dust Dragon out of here. I will see to the station’s power generators, then join you,
”
I sent.

I checked my stores of potions and saw I had two of the illuminescence potions left, but only one of the explosion ones. I would have to make it count.

I teleported directly to engineering and was greeted by a large amount of blaster fire. My shields held, but I had to dive for cover. Once I had regained my wits, I reached out and grabbed the energy from their weapons and completely drained their power. I then stood back up and said, “This is your only chance, run.”

They took one look at their weapons, dropped them, and headed for the door. I knew they would be back with fully charged weapons, so I would need to work fast. I located the central power conduits that fed the station and followed them back to their source. At their source was a Mark Three Tythiarn generator, extremely safe and power-efficient.

I teleported myself inside the safety zone of the generator. I bent its power around me into a shield as I looked for the place where the power conduits attached. Once I found it, I quickly reached out with my power and ripped them off, which killed some of the power feeds to the station. I continued around the generator, destroying every connection to it, but trying not to harm the generator itself. The Aleeryon Navy could use this station if I did not destroy it.

Once I was satisfied that the station was completely without power, I returned to the Dust Dragon and collapsed into a chair. “Report,” I said.

“Shadow!” screamed Flame in excitement.

“Yes, is me, but we are not out of the battle yet. What is our status?” I asked.

“Station shields are completely offline and it looks like the Aleeryon Navy has the pirates on the run.”

“Excellent. Get Bill on the line, then,” I said.

“Shadow! Flame!” Bill cried out as he came on the screen.

“Yes, Admiral,” I said. “The station has been disabled, but it is still occupied by enemy forces. You will need to send infantry in to claim it. I can provide maps and troop counts, of course.”

“Excellent, send all that you have, and we will take care of it. We’ve pretty much achieved victory out here,” he said and then paused a moment. “How did you fare?”

“Not sure yet. Two are still deployed, and two are in sickbay, one desperately critical. It was a costly mission, Bill,” I said.

“I am sorry,” he said. “Get your people out; we can take it from here.”

“Yeah, I would love to,” I said, then cut the comm. “Flame, jump us out of here and hide somewhere. I will need to rest before we hunt for Dusty and Spectra.”

Once we were clear of the ongoing battle at the station, I put a call in to Grandmaster Vydor for help to locate Spectra and Dusty. I knew they were probably out of my reach and in deep trouble. I decided it was not worth the risk to wait until I was recovered to hunt for them. When I told Grandmaster Vydor that they were lost somewhere in the spiritual realm, he said he would send Master Kellyn after them right away, and in the meantime we were ordered to make best speed for home. It took over a week to get home from where we were, and once back home we were kept isolated from the rest of the Academy. The Council wanted to debrief us first.

After we left, the Aleeryon Navy brought in infantry and took over the station. They were very pleased that most of the station was unharmed during our invasion and expected to have it fully functional in a few months. It was positioned off the beaten path, but within an easy jump to many major trade routes. This meant it was the perfect advanced base for them.

Operation Show of Force was a complete success. We eliminated the pirate threat and destroyed a key sorcerer base. The Dust Dragon and her crew proved the value of the Battle Wizard model, and I looked forward to many more missions with my crew. Our successes were the talk of all the major news and gossip channels and grew many times over in the retelling. We achieved every single one of our objectives.

When Master Kellyn had found Dusty and Spectra, they were both in really bad shape. She could not tell what had happened there, but when she found them, a dozen specters were guarding their unconscious forms. It was assumed that Spectra summoned them before she fell, but neither of them had awakened yet as of the last report I had heard.

As for Phoenix, with Leslie’s treatment and the help of some of Shea’s potions, he made a complete recovery. Shea said there would have been no way to save him had I not caught him when I did.

Darius, on the other hand, only lived an hour or so longer after the fight. I was at his side when he breathed his last, and his dying words would stay with me forever. He said, “Thank you for redeeming me,” and then passed on. He was not looking at me when he said that but somewhere off into space, and I had no idea what it meant. His loss was devastating to my team’s morale, so it was good to have this period at home for everyone to mourn.

While waiting for our debriefing, we continued to live on the Dust Dragon. Headmaster Rannor was the first to visit us when we got back, under the guise of a medical exam, but we all saw right through that. He did pronounce us clean, but mainly spent time with Shea and Leslie, learning about their discoveries with illuminescence and the other potions.

About a week after we returned to Alpha Academy, Dusty and Spectra returned to the Dust Dragon. When they rejoined us, I decided a party was in order, which everyone thought was a wonderful idea. During the party I looked at Dusty and asked, “So what happened over there?”

“Master, I was defending Spectra until I was overcome by the sheer number of attackers. I do not know what happened beyond that,” said Dusty.

“Spectra? Can you fill me in?” I asked.

“Master, I only know a little more. Dusty fell shortly after the tear closed, and before I could cast a gate to get us out of there. I summoned spiritual guardians to buy me time to get a gate open, but that took the last of my strength. Next thing I remember is waking up in Alpha Academy’s infirmary,” said Spectra.

“I cannot even imagine what you two saw over there,” I said. “What was it like?”

They looked at each other and smiled a little, then Dusty said, “Master, it was marvelous. Well, sure it would have been nicer without a zillion foul creatures of every kind trying to kill us so that they could break through to our realm and conquer it. Well, I guess it was not very marvelous, but we would do it again in a heartbeat, even if there would be no one to rescue us this time.”

They were different somehow, and I was not really sure it was in a good way.

“Look at them, like two little lovebirds,”
sent Flame. “
So cute!”

“
You sure called it years ago when she first joined the team. I do not know how you could tell,
” I sent back.

“
Speaking of which, you owe me a wedding still,
” she sent.

“
Yes. I will ask Grandmaster Vydor about it once we are completely debriefed,”
I sent back.

We chatted some more, and we brought Dusty and Spectra up to date on all that happened since we lost contact with them. All in all, it was a great party and the first time we allowed ourselves to unwind since returning. The stress of the mission and our loss was finally behind us. I wondered about our next mission and what it would be, since the sorcerer base had been eliminated and the pirates broken up. I even wondered if there would be another mission any time soon.

Eventually the party wound down, and Flame and I headed back to our room. Once there, I saw a message waiting for me on the comm from Grandmaster Vydor. I quickly hit play, and he said, “I did not want to interrupt your party, so I used a more mundane means to send this. Tomorrow at midday Master Gafar will pick you and Dusty up for debriefing in my chambers.”

“Well, I guess you’d better get some sleep, then,” said Flame, noting the very late hour.

“Yes, that would be good,” I said. I let Dusty know via our telepathic network and then turned in to try and get some sleep.

Sleep would not come easy that night; it had not since we closed the tear. I sensed at the closing of the tear that a massive wave of darkness had been released across the realm. The weave was healed, magic was free again, and with it was released an ancient evil of some kind. I had guessed that we had set the old man up to become Grandmaster Sorcerer, but what I sensed was far darker than him. A vast shadow of darkness was over the whole realm, a shadow that spoke of ancient evil.

The worst of it was what I saw in my dreams every night. In my dreams I saw seven ancient magi in a stone room raise their hands, which were chained to the floor. Then, one by one, Spectra and I freed them. Once the last one was freed, they flew from the room and spread death and destruction everywhere they went. The worst part of the dream was I knew deep down in my core it was true, and somehow we had released a long-imprisoned darkness.

###

The story continues in
Resurgence of Ancient Darkness
: When Shadow’s team healed reality by closing the last tear they paved the way for a new evil, one that has been patiently waiting for its chance to rise again. Shadow must build a navy out of his fledgling Battle Wizards and carry the fight to the enemy before it comes for them..

Also check out Vincent’s other novels and series by clicking here:
http://smarturl.it/VincentBooks