His Cure For Magic (Book 2) (31 page)

"Jeremiah's research?"

"Jeremiah... That name is familiar. I-"

A loud cry interrupted him.
 

"It is here," Oz bellowed from beyond the room. They heard the wet slap of a blade driving through flesh.

"Come on," Silas said. He ran from the room, with Wilem chasing behind.

A dozen corpses already lay at the juggernaut's feet, but it was nothing compared to the sheer number of the creatures that were coming towards them. They were in a large antechamber that had once been separated from the reactor by a wide, heavy ircidium door, which now rested on the floor in front of them. The Shifters poured over it like ants, leaping at Oz and trying to gain enough numbers and mass to bring it down.

"Goblins," Silas said. "Oz should be able to manage them."

"The reactor?" Wilem asked.

Silas sidestepped a goblin and brought his blade around, skewering it and returning his blade with expert precision. He caught the wrist of another, turning the arm to break it, and throwing the creature aside. "Oz?"

"It is pleased," the juggernaut said. It had seven of the goblins striking at it with their claws, but it didn't seem to notice. It removed them one at a time, cutting a large swath of destruction with the sword and sending bodies away with its heavy feet.

Silas dispatched two more of the creatures with ease, leading Wilem through the onslaught to the room beyond. They could hear the mechanisms in the background, the gears, pistons and pumps in perpetual motion, pulling energy from the core and now using it to expel the mist.
 

Then they were through the melee and in, looking out at the massive expanse of the room and the ircidium and iron machinery that worked there. Silas knew the layout from their view through the seeing stone. Eryn would be in the far corner, tucked away from sight. The General was here, somewhere.

A Shifter appeared to his left. A twelve foot tall creature with thick limbs and a heavy jaw; an orc. It carried a blade of its own, and it brought it down with a heavy stroke that Silas barely managed to evade. He turned and moved in, bringing himself inside the creature's guard to strike.

It disappeared, coming back into view a few feet away, sword raised and ready to strike again.

A ball of fire slammed into its chest, exploding as it hit the monster and spreading across its skin. The orc vanished for a moment, and then reappeared as charred, dead flesh.

Silas scanned the room, but he knew he wouldn't be able to see them. Eryn had told her that Iolas called it a 'distortion field'. She explained how she could use her magic to go to this space outside of their time, where everything moved so much faster than it did here, such that it appeared to her as if everything were standing still. She had the ability to reach across time and affect things in their world, as she had when she'd killed Feng.
 

Fortunately, the orcs were limited to one or the other.

Unfortunately, not all of the Shifters were so constrained.

An orc appeared beside Wilem. Silas started to shout a warning, but the Mediator had learned quickly from seeing the first. He reached out and put his hand on the Shifter's wrist, and a glow of energy ran up the creature's arm. It cried out and fell over, burned from the inside out.

A shimmering bolt of light appeared ahead of them and launched towards Silas. He set his legs and put his blade up in front of it, catching the power on the metal and holding steady while it fought to get beyond his barrier. Light flared in front of the sword, reflecting off the ircidium and shining an intense brightness throughout the reactor. Silas turned his head away from it so it wouldn't blind him, and pushed forward through the attack.

It ceased without warning. Silas turned his gaze again and saw the Shifter burned and on its back, killed by Wilem's fire.
 

"You came for the daughter."

The voice arrived from nowhere, and everywhere. It boomed in his head, and made him shiver. "Where are you?" he asked.

"I am here."

The Shifter appeared in the center of the room. It had Eryn cradled in its arms.

"Eryn?"

Silas heard the anger and desperation in Wilem's voice. "Wilem, don't. Remember what I told you."

The turmoil played across the Mediator's body. The tension was obvious in the flexing muscles of his neck and hands, but he stood his ground.

"I remember."

Silas felt the blue eyes piercing his soul. He raised his sword up in front of his face, but it did no good. He was trapped by the gaze, frozen in place while the Shifter raided his mind.

"I killed you," he managed to say, without moving his lips.

"
You wounded me."
It touched its abdomen. It was smooth, undamaged.
"It was healed when we were forced to flee through the subroute. Few of us escaped, but escape we did. We have waited for our brothers to return, but with the daughter, we will not have to wait. With the Queen, we can restore our kind from the energy of the reactor, and the power of the prozoa."

Silas felt a burning in his head as the Shifter pulled his memories to the surface. They flashed behind his eyes, single images of other times, before he had been turned into a creature of flesh and metal, crystal and magic. He saw men, women, and children moving through the corridors of Genesia. The dim hallways were bright with glowing moss, brightly colored flowers, and illuminated stones. There was laughter and music creating a landscape of normalcy amidst the serious intensity of the research.
 

In the beginning, the reactors had been a utopia for making dreams into reality.

In the end, they had brought them only nightmares, like the creature standing in front of him.

"Yes. This was the place where it began. The stone at Ares-Nor was larger, stronger. The resonance magnitudes greater. Remember for me, Talon Rast. Remember the mathematics. Remember the algorithms. Help us increase the resonance, and we will be free once more."

Silas had no control of it. Pictures flew through his mind, so quickly that he saw nothing but blurs of color and light, and drawings of symbols on black stone. He clenched his eyes shut, trying to will the ircidium blade to protect him, but the power was coming from everywhere at once. In full ircidium armor he could withstand it, but he didn't have so much as a helm.
 

"Interesting."

Silas tried to scream. It came out as nothing more than a guttural growl of pain and fury. The images kept coming, faster and faster.
 

"Yes. Yes. I understand."

He felt the power release, and everything slowed. He felt his mind become his own again, but there was something different about it. He remembered Genesia. He remembered his wife, Alyssa, and their two boys. They had been traveling at the time, and had died in the first attacks. Killed by the Shifters. Who was the woman that had left him for the unknown lands? Had she ever existed at all? Who was Aren to him? Had Rossum been telling the truth, or had all of the fingers picking at his mind damaged it beyond repair?
 

The pain of it would have brought him to tears, except there was something else he remembered now. Something he needed, but hadn't known it.

"You have been useful, Talon Rast. You are no longer necessary."

The Shifter vanished.
 

Silas vanished with it.

He entered the distortion field, tagging along on the energy of the creature, an energy that he could feel as a solid thrumming at the base of his ebocite heart. He remembered the experiments now, the captured Shifter soldiers, the ircidium and wood machines that measured the resonances, the power outputs, the 'temporal variations', as they had labeled them.
 

The Shifter elite were like Eryn. They could affect one time from the other. Unlike Eryn, they could remain there indefinitely, or come and go from one to the other as they pleased. They were the reason the war had almost been lost. It took only a handful to move through an army and cut the throats of ten-thousand men in what they would feel only as a single heartbeat or two. The most powerful wizards had been able to join them in the temporal distortion to fight them, but they could last a few minutes at most outside of their time. They had killed two of the elite, while the elite and their armies had killed over three hundred thousand.
 

The bodies had been brought to Genesia. To Jeremiah. He had used what he'd learned from the soldiers to make a different kind of juggernaut than the ones that built the reactors, like Oz, or now fought against the lesser creatures. That much ircidium couldn't pass through the distortion, but they couldn't pierce the hides of the Shifter elite without it.

They needed to turn humans into monsters.
 

Only nine of them survived.

He stayed behind it, watching unseen as it retreated across the reactor and returned Eryn to the bedding that had been left for her there. It lowered her with utmost care, placing her tenderly on the mattresses and using a long finger to push the hair from her face. She turned her head and released a satisfied gasp.

Silas took three quick, long strides towards it and raised his blade. He was silent as he brought it down towards the creature's back.

Thrummm...

They were back in real time. The Shifter moved aside, letting Silas' blade stab the air beside it, and then reached out and grabbed his wrist.

Thrummm...

They vanished. It slammed an elbow back into his face, rocking it backwards and opening the skin below his eye. He threw a stiff punch into its back, scraping his knuckles on the tough hide but getting enough force behind it to make it let go. It kicked backwards, catching him in the gut and sending him sliding across the floor.

Thrummm...
 

"Silas?" he heard Wilem say. To him, they were changing positions without any time in between.

He rolled backwards to his feet, bringing his ircidium blade up to catch the lightning that launched from the Shifter's free hand. A bright ball of fire rocketed towards the creature.

Thrummm...

The fire sat suspended in time. The Shifter moved to the side to get out of the path. The unintended motion gave Silas the time he needed to get back in motion, and he raced forward towards it.

Something slammed into him, throwing him sideways. He kept moving, rolling along the floor. While they had been in real time, reinforcements had arrived in the distortion.

Silas bounced to his feet and caught the orc's attack. He knocked the blade aside and stabbed it smoothly in the chest. He pulled the sword out and turned away from a second, throwing a punch and knocking it off-balance. He kept rotating, letting his momentum carry his blade into its side and back out again.

Thrummm...

They fell out of the distortion, along with the orcs. Silas heard Wilem shout in surprise, and saw him backing away from a group of Shifters. He heard heavy feet near the back of the room, and risked a glance to see Oz lumbering in.
 

Thrummm...

They left real time. The Shifter General was easy to see in the distortion as the only thing moving. Silas ran towards it, not wasting the opportunity to run his sword across the soldiers that were trapped out of sync.
 

He maneuvered past the stationary creatures, and realized he had been wrong.

The Shifter General wasn't the only thing moving.

"Talon," Clau said, a smile spreading on his intense face. "You were telling the truth about the Shifters."

"Are you going to help me?" he asked.

"With this, yes. Once this is done..."

Thrummm...

Time adjusted again. Clau knocked aside the sword of a soldier and stabbed it. "Over there," he said.
 

The Shifter was heading towards Wilem. The Mediator cast out another ball of fire, but it exploded in the space between them as the General deflected it with magic of its own.

"I'm trusting you, brother," Silas said. He drew back his arm, and threw his blade as hard as he could.

It was perfectly balanced for a sword. It was poorly balanced as a throwing knife. It spun end over end, and struck the creature hard in the temple with the flat of the blade. It wasn't enough to do any damage, but it was enough to redirect its attention.

That was all Silas had been trying to do.

"Yaaaaaaa," he cried out as he charged, unarmed, at the creature. It turned towards him. It could see he was weaponless. There was no ircidium to protect him.
 

Thrummm...

It couldn't fight him there, where Wilem could attack. It raised its hand, sending a dozen bolts of energy towards him. He turned his body to the side and dove forward, feeling the burning pain as one of the bolts struck his arm and two more grazed his leg. He flipped over and was back on his feet, leaping into the air, coming fast at the Shifter, throwing out his leg to kick it in the chest.
 

It caught the leg, turning so that it could use his momentum and throw him into the metal wall of one of the reactor components. He hit it hard, feeling his body flex beneath the blow. His eyes were blurry when he looked up at the creature standing over him.

"You lost," Silas said.

It didn't speak. He could tell it had sensed Clau.

Too late.

He smiled as he watched the blade cut easily through the Shifter's neck.
 

Thrummm...

The head tumbled to the floor. The soldiers around them cried out in fear and shock, and then vanished.

"It comes back," Oz bellowed from across the room.
 

Silas looked up at Clau, standing over him with his sword in hand. They stared at one another as the heartbeats passed.

Clau held out his hand. Silas took it, and let himself be pulled to his feet.

"Get your sword," he said. "There are still a few left."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Wilem