Resurgence of Ancient Darkness (38 page)

“
What do you mean
?” she asked.

I was going to change the subject, but something in her eyes told me that this was something she needed to hear. I sent her the memory of when I’d almost murdered everyone in that room during operation Show of Force. “
That day scared me to the core, especially since that wasn’t the only time something like that happened. Only Shea knows about these things.”

“Oh, Dusty, I’m so sorry. Bringing you here was foolish. I didn’t think you were this far along in your development. If you fell to darkness, I could never live with myself!”
she sent.

“
After I talked with Shea about that day, she gave me a charm. She told me it would protect me from darkness, but I never understood until now. I am wearing that charm under my armor, and it was getting hotter and hotter the whole time I was casting. It has cooled down now. I suspect it was protecting me from the power I was using,
” I sent.

“
But …”
she sent. She pushed back and looked at me. “
That’s not possible!”

“
You say that a lot when we talk about Shea,
” I sent.

“
So it seems, but your aura has not shifted at all!”
she sent.

“
That's good, isn’t it?”
I asked.

“
Yes! But how can that be? The powers that charm would have had to fight are enormous!
” she sent.

“
I don’t know, but we’re running out of time on our one-month honeymoon. Let’s be grateful and push on,
” I sent.

“
I guess so, but I have to talk with Shea about this charm,
” she sent.

We pushed hard to make it to the third peak without using any magic. I still couldn’t judge the passage of time, but the clocks on our armor told us that we had very little left. We did not need to stop to rest so often now, which allowed us to make better time.

I had not recast my magical awareness since landing, but as we got closer I could see the glow without help. “
Spectra, why can I see it now
?” I asked.

“
I can see it now too. Your magical awareness spell must have made you more sensitive in order to see it from that far away, but the fact that you can see it now without any magic is troublesome
.
You are adapting to this realm, and that is not good
,” she replied.

“
What do you mean
?” I asked.

“
Shea was not wrong when she said Spiritualists turn into Necromancers. From what I can tell, unless you have darkness in you, you can’t be a Spiritualist. Don’t you see? This place is a land of pure evil. It is a place created for the most evil to be imprisoned, and you are starting to feel at home here
,” she sent.

This clearly bothered her greatly, judging by her mental tone. “
What about you
?”

“
I have learned to resist it, mostly,
” she sent.

“
Well, I will too. But you said you need darkness to be a Spiritualist. What about Master Kellyn?
” I asked.

“
She is a complete mystery to me. I have studied her aura every time I have seen her, and it is pure and clean. I wish I could understand how
!” she replied.

We reached the base of the trail that should bring us to the source of the glow. “
I’d better cast my cloaking spell before we head up there.”

“
No, let’s use Wraith Form instead. We will appear to be natives if anyone sees us, and it does not have a continuous power drain like your cloaks do,
” she sent.

“
Oh, yeah! I like that idea,
” I sent. “
But I thought casting anything but my cloaks would draw attention.
”

“I
f you cloak us first I think we can pull it off, if we are quick about it. I didn’t want to risk it before, but if the sorcerers are up there we can’t risk being seen,
” she sent.

After almost a month of walking, I had no desire to argue against flying. We quickly cast the spells and flew up the mountain. As we closed in on the glow, it began to separate into six separate pillars of glowing energy. Each was tinted in its own color, and they seemed to radiate coldness.

“
What is that?”
I asked.

“
We found the tables!”
she sent back.

“
There are six more, then?
” I asked.

“
No, look beyond those. You can see the central table. That is the only one that matters. We can use it to return to the physical realm and from there find the rest of the tables,”
she sent.

“
I thought you said we could see them all from here
,” I sent.

“
To be honest, I am really making this up as I go. I thought we could, but unless there is only one table left, it appears not. No matte;. let’s use that table to get back to the physical realm and work from there,”
she sent.

I stifled a chuckle at that. She always sounded so confident of what she said, and now it seemed she was guessing as much as the rest of us. “
What are those columns of energy, then?
”

“
I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that,
” she replied.

“
Well, I just did, so what are they?
” I asked.

“
I’m fairly sure it means that six of the seven are currently here,”
she sent.

“
Yeah, I wish I hadn’t asked,
” I sent.

We slowly moved towards the table. As wraiths, we blended into the background. Everywhere you went in this realm there were wraiths, ghosts, and other spirits flying around, even here. There was nothing remarkable about us or what we were doing. In effect, we were hiding in plain sight.

Around the table sat six of the seven sorcerers. Their aura was as evil as evil could be. There was nothing of the light anywhere. I felt a part of me being pulled towards their power, and I could see other wraiths seemed to prefer hanging around this area.

I mentally shook myself; I could not let myself be pulled into their aura. “
How do we use the table?”
I asked.

“
Fly into it, and be ready to cloak us when we come out the other side,
” she sent.

We flew through the table and came out into a stone room. In the center of it was another one of the tables, surrounded by seven thankfully empty chairs.

“
Quick, bind here and let’s go before we are discovered,
” she sent.

I did as she said and then we returned to the Spirit Realm, but we didn’t travel back through the table. We instead went to one of our safe binding points; from there we traveled back to our binding point on the Shadow Fox.

“We did it!” called out Spectra as we returned to physical form.

“Yes!” I said and then collapsed into a chair. The room was spinning around me, and I was very light-headed. “Ugh,” was all I managed to get out.

“Easy, there. It will take your body some time to get used to being a body again after all that time in the Spirit Realm,” she said.

“You don’t seem affected,” I said as the room slowed its motion.

“It’s like the post-jump hangover. As you grow in your power, you won’t have this issue anymore either.” She then turned to the comm and said, “Master Shadow, we have returned and are safely on the Shadow Fox.”

“That is wonderful news! Shea and I will be there in a moment,” responded Shadow.

“Great, Master! We will be in the mess hall,” I said and closed the comm channel.

“I wonder why he is bringing Shea,” said Spectra.

“He’s probably thinking along the lines of his former experience in the Imperial Navy. Standard naval practice requires a medical exam, and sometimes quarantine, after being in foreign territory,” I said.

Since in the physical world our bodies needed food to operate and we had gone for so long without proper food, we found ourselves craving an odd mixture of items, most of which were high in protein. We were eating in the mess hall when Shadow and Shea arrived. As they entered, Spectra flew out of her chair and almost tackled Shea in an effort to hug her. “Thank you, a million times over, thank you!”

“Well, I was just about to say, ‘We need to check you before we get too close,’ but never mind,” said Master Shadow with a big smile. “It is good to see both of you again!”

“Thanks, Master,” I said.

Shadow looked suspiciously at Shea and Spectra and said, “Any trouble while there?”

“Master, it was fairly boring mostly, but we did find six of the sorcerers. I’m pretty sure they never saw us,” I said.

“In this case, boring is good!” said Shadow. “Did you find the tables?”

“Yes; not exactly as we planned, but Spectra was able to get the locations,” I said.

Spectra slowly moved away from Shea and returned to snuggle into my side. “Yes, Master Shadow. I have the locations of five more tables. I don’t know if that is all there are. Most of the ones I found were very low on power except the one we are currently heading towards. I think that one will be key. If we destroy it, that should cut back
their supply of power substantially.”

“Shea, do you need run any tests before we can return to the ship?” asked Shadow.

“Master, there is nothing they could have picked up in the Spirit Realm that would survive here, but I will examine both of them to be absolutely sure,” she said.

“Excellent. Then I will leave you to do that and send a message to Grandmaster Vydor about your return. He was very insistent that he be informed the moment you returned, and I am sure he will want a briefing. Will two days be enough time to enable you to present that?” asked Master Shadow.

“Yes, Master,” said Spectra.

Once Master Shadow left, Spectra turned to me and said, “I want to see this charm.”

“Sure,” I said. I pulled it out of my armor and handed it to her.

She rolled it over in her hands and said, “I don’t understand.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Shea.

I explained to Shea about the power of evil flowing into me and how the charm had got warmer the longer the power flowed.

“He’s unharmed by all that power! That should not be possible,” said Spectra. “Mind you, I am eternally grateful that I still have my goofy fish, but it’s just not possible!”

Shea had a huge smile on her face and said, “Praise be to the Light! I had a vision of Master Dusty being overcome by darkness. I didn’t understand it, but I fashioned that charm specifically to defend against what I saw.”

“But …” spluttered Spectra, and threw up her hands. “Shea, for such a dear friend you make very little
sense!”

That brought out a chuckle from all of us. “Master Spectra, I will make you a charm also. That will make your trips to that awful place a little safer, at least,” said Shea. “Let’s go to sickbay and get your examinations done.”

“Do you mind if we finish eating first?” I asked. “We haven’t seen real food in a month!”

“Not at all. What did you eat there?” she asked.

“We ate these.” I reached in to my armor to pull out one of the fruits, but they were gone. I checked all my pockets, but I could find no trace of the gray fruit.

“Sorry, Dusty, I should’ve warned you. You can’t bring anything back from there unless it came from somewhere else first.”

“Oh; well, it was a round, gray fruit-like thing,” I said.

“Master, is that all you ate for the whole month?” she asked.

“Yeah; there wasn’t anything else to eat,” I said.

“Shea, I lived on them for a long while, previously, and didn’t suffer any ill effects; so they’re safe,” said Spectra.

“I’m sure, Master, but they’re probably not perfect. Judging by the food choices you’ve made, the fruits were lacking several key nutrients which your bodies need and are now craving as a result. I’ll do a complete nutrition panel to see what is up when you’re finished
eating,” said Shea.

Shea joined us at the table for a while, and at first we just talked about random sights we saw over there, but eventually the talk came back around to the evil nature of the place and Spectra dumped out everything on the table. She talked about what she saw as her evil nature and how grateful she had been all these years to the few wizards who
had taken her in. “Without them, and now you, Shea, there’s no way I could have made it. I can’t imagine life without all of you anymore.”

“Spectra, I can help you through this, if you let me. I can help you stay the person you are, if you want that
. Only you can make that choice, but I will be here for you always,” said Shea.

I left Spectra, Dusty and Shea alone to catch up and went to contact Grandmaster Vydor and to meet with Glimmer. I knew that Shea had been working with them on some personal issues, but not precisely what. I was sure that if I asked, Dusty would tell me, but I did not feel that I should. I had decided to let it work itself out naturally and leave it alone. However, I did want to know the story behind that hug. Perhaps I would ask that much, but it would have to wait.

Glimmer was a different problem, and one which I must resolve before our next jump. He had been a perfectly polite and understanding guest, but the Nevermore was a top-secret facility and he was a foreigner, which made his presence somewhat awkward. After I had sent a message to Grandmaster Vydor, I went looking for the trader. I found him alone in his quarters. “Hello, Glimmer,” I said.

“Hi, Shadow!” he said as he answered the door.

“Well, Glimmer, it is decision time,” I said and followed him into his sitting room.

“That’s what I like about you, Shadow. You always start with some small talk to soften the mood before getting into any serious conversation,” he said with a big grin.

“The problem, Glimmer, is this: tomorrow’s jump will take us off this trade route and far away from any trade hub. If you launch before we make that jump, you are about two days from the nearest trade hub. If you stay with us, then it will take your little ship many months to get back,” I said.

“So you are kicking me off, then?” he asked.

“That is up to you. Do you remember those wands you had in the crate?” I asked.