Chapter 26

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"I do not understand, outsider," Dresden said as they went.

Shah repeated himself. "Sonic's time here was limited, Dresden. As is mine."

"And then where do you go?"

"Back to our land. We can only stay here for so long."

"I wanted to know more about her."

"I can tell you anything you want to know."

"Have you been friends with her long?"

"Yes, quite long. I taught her to fly – " Shah stopped. There wasn't a single word or phrase in the entire language of the Hep to describe an aerial assault fighter. "Er, I taught her to fly," he repeated lamely.

"You can fly?" Dresden asked, amazed. "I know the Custodian is capable of such a feat, but usually the power is even beyond those endowed with great magic!"

"We have assistance," Shah said, as if this explained everything. Both he and Sonic could technically fly unassisted, if they so wished. It just made more sense to fly in a fighter craft. They came with bigger weapons.

And Dresden was definitely disappointed by the turn of events. Shah would've thought the bunfight currently taking place was of greater concern, but apparently not. "Sonic may be back – "

"May?"

"'Will' be back, Dresden, when the time is right," Shah said, hastily correcting himself, while thinking: Looks like Sonic's assessment was right: poor kid's fallen pretty hard. Ariadne 'Sonic' Hernandez was, to all intents and purposes, one very good-looking girl. In fact, their organization was positively lousy with beautiful people (a consequence of biological manipulation at the atomic level), but given that their 'baser' instincts were kept in check, it didn't mean so much – a blessing, really. What Shah couldn't tell Dresden, though, was that Carla Hadley would likely be next, and whoever else happened to have heard of the Anomaly interconnect would follow after. They were, after all, a very curious bunch.

Something occurred to Shah. "Where is your katarn?"

"You know of Mohon?"

Shah nodded. "Sonic advised me of all that transpired here, Dresden. I had hoped to meet your friend."

"Mohon was sent with the evacuation guard before the battle commenced," Dresden said. The regret was evident in his voice. "I could not have him with me."

"Why not?" Shah asked, then the answer occurred to him. "Ah, of course. Other guards would recognize you. And your mother would be informed."

Tayra was listening to their conversation. "The Queen is the true master of the katan, outsider. But Dresden is more than ready to fight with us. I truly know of none better with the bow."

Shah looked at Dresden, impressed. "High praise, Sire Faramay."

Dresden was about to reply when Tayra held her sword up, then ushered them to the side of the road. A moment later, two spear carriers emerged from the gloom, the blue-fire tips of their weapons hissing in the dust.

"Jeren, Mura, that is you?" Tayra asked.

"It is, captain," the closest spearman answered. "We caught the brute you were chasing, but there are others farther along, not many. Captain Finas and his men are close now. Hela is masked and watching the road ahead, but the smoke is revealing her." He lifted his helmet slightly and spat a large gob onto the road, lighting up a cobblestone. "Klem beasts made this storm so we couldn't hide!"

"Of course, Jeren," Tayra said. She pointed at Shah. "But we do not need to hide now, we have an outsider mage with us."

"The girl of power?"

"No. Her friend."

The spearman moved closer, squinting through his helmet. "This child?" he asked, incredulous.

"Shee-eesh," Shah said. "I am no child, Hepsguard. I am the... 'boy of power'."

The spear carrier grunted. Then he caught sight of Shah's gun. "Urewan said he saw the girl of power on the Custodian's wall," he said cautiously, "with a mighty thunder staff. That is it there?"

"Tessil said the same!" the other spearman said, also looking at Shah's gun. "She said the young witch wielded it against the Klem horde and the siege machines! A staff of iron and fire!"

Shah sighed, thinking: Good to see rumors operate at normal speed in this place. He put one hand on the gun. "My staff is more powerful than hers, Hepsguard. I will use it in your defense."

Tayra spoke: "Then let us move on. Mayhaps we can deal with the brutes ourselves."

Another shadow formed in the haze ahead, a figure closing rapidly. An archer emerged, and she halted at the group. "Captain Tayra!" she said, out of breath.

"Hela, report?" Tayra asked, gripping her sword tightly.

"More Gol'ur-Klem! A horde, with their Core! Captain Finas and his men are revealed! They – "

There was an enormous crash from the direction where the archer had come, followed by loud rumbling: the sound of a building collapsing. The glow in that direction turned bright orange. More silhouettes paced toward them, followed by a terrified cry from within the haze: "Run! For the Highest's sake, run!"

Screaming. Then the heavy grunts of Gol'ur-Klem brutes, maybe dozens or more. The ground vibrated with their approach, giant shadows eclipsing those of the approaching Hepsguard.

"Outsider!" Dresden said to Shah. "Help them!"

"Sure thing," Shah said, and aimed the Rig at the movement. But the scope revealed nothing. "Ah, bollocks," he continued, then in the language of the Hep: "I must wait! I risk hurting the fleeing Hepsguard!"

Tayra motioned to her spear carriers. "Jeren, Mura! Move to the front! Sire Faramay, Hela, take cover! And draw your bows!"

The shadows approached, the first fleeing soldier now staggering into visibility. The lance he bore was broken in two, its fiery end dangling uselessly.

Then Shah had an idea.

It was a bad idea, one rooted in a blithe and careless mistake, so how was he to know?

He pointed the Rig slightly above the horizontal. He would fire one shot, a warning round over the heads of the approaching brutes, letting them know there was something waiting for them here, something that should not be messed with.

"Cover your ears!" he said to both the Hepsguard and Dresden.

What he should have said was 'hold on for your lives.'

He pulled the trigger.

There was a huge, bright-white flash from the forked end of the weapon, immediately accompanied by a tremendous WHAP! – the first shockwave – that tore the air apart. The projectile fired from the weapon streaked down the road straight as an arrow, and the huge vortex that appeared – the hypersonic wake of the bullet – was a bright tunnel in the air.

"Oh – " crap, Shah wanted to finish, but there was no time. A cyclonic inrush of air funneled violently into the wide vacuum of the round's wake. Shah managed to stay upright (the Hepsguard and Dresden were completely knocked over, then dragged along the road), and in his keenly observant and positively terrified state, he watched everything adjacent to the Rig-induced maelstrom – the approaching Hepsguard, the Gol'ur-Klem brutes, buildings and masonry, roofing, glowing cobblestones from the road, even trees uprooted from God knew where (the hillside maybe) – get sucked in to the rapidly spinning center, jumbling together as though in an aerial blender.

The vortex exploded with a cataclysmic BANG!

The second shockwave was a wall of massive overpressure, shattering the atmosphere. Whatever had been sucked into the horizontal tornado of the Rig-shot's wake was completely disintegrated. Buildings on both sides of the road blasted apart, pulverized and smashed to smithereens. The road beneath Shah and the Hepsguard's feet ruptured, heaving cobblestone pieces flashing frenetically, while the group were thrown violently backward this time, and they tumbled like leaves in a hurricane. As they landed heavily onto the road some distance away, shattered bits of, well, everything, pelted down, cascading from the roiling atmosphere in a downpour of detritus that went on for a long time.

When the debris hailstorm finally subsided, Shah, lying face-down, slowly removed his hands from his head and got to his feet, dust and masonry tumbling off his back.

He looked around. The place was a total mess. The haze was resettling into the shockwave-generated air gap, but Shah could see the line of destruction his weapon had wrought all too well. It was as though a massive bomb had gone off, albeit one that had bizarrely detonated in a long, straight line. The trail of devastation seemed to lessen further down, while the visible horizon was already obscured by the returning smoke. Shah hoped like heck the bullet had been stopped by something.

Maybe the round was still traveling. The thought made his blood run cold.

He spotted the Rig lying a few feet away (it had been knocked out of his hands by the blast), stuck between a shattered wooden beam and what appeared to be a ragged and charred piece of Gol'ur-Klem brute.

"Bollocks," he groaned, and staggered over to retrieve the gun. He dusted it, then checked the scope for the shot-velocity setting. "Mach... one hundred," he said, and groaned again. The gun was supposed to be set at 'Mach 10'. Higher settings were meant to be accompanied by personal shielding (for now-obvious reasons).

He adjusted the velocity parameter, reducing the projectile speed all the way down to Mach 6, this time double- and triple-checking he had the number right. Then he quadruple-checked, just to be absolutely, positively sure, by asking the gun: "You're at Mach six now, right?"

The word: 'YES' popped up in the scope.

"Good," he said. "And crap."

He swung the weapon over his shoulder, sighed, and sat heavily onto the rubble-covered ground. Everything had been going quite well, until now. He was very worried – terrified, in fact – that he'd just gone and destroyed a sizable portion of the town, killing invaders, defenders, and innocents all in a single, miscalculated blast.

Then he heard a moan coming from a debris pile nearby, and he brightened, a little. Looked like he hadn't killed everyone after all. He got to his feet and ambled over the shattered road to where the pained noise was coming from. A dust-covered feminine shape lay against the remnants of a wall.

It was Tayra. Her eyes were visible through her helmet, and they were blinking slowly and unsteadily.

"Captain, are you well?" Shah asked. It seemed like a ridiculous question, more so considering that, if Sonic was right about the behavior of sound in this place, there was a distinct possibility he had gone and permanently deafened the guard.

"I am well," Tayra said, and Shah breathed an internal sigh of relief. "What... happened?" she asked timidly.

"What happened was my weapon," Shah replied, "It is very powerful, I used it unwisely, and I am immensely sorry. Are you hurt anywhere?"

"My... my..." she said, and raised her hands to her helmet. She removed it, revealing a surprisingly youthful and handsome visage. Her short, light-colored hair clung to her dust-streaked skin, and Shah was relieved to see her eyes were clear and unblemished. There were no obvious signs of internal hemorrhaging (assuming these Anomaly-folk were human-like, that was). "My... armor protected me, outsider," she said, then pointed weakly to something behind Shah. "Please... see to Sire Faramay."

Shah turned to see Dresden standing unsteadily amidst the rubble. The boy had also removed his helmet, and was patting his head as if to make sure it was still on his neck. He looked over at Shah. "By the Highest, outsider, what have you done?"

"I am truly, truly sorry, Dresden," Shah said, feeling like he could crawl into a hole about now. "My weapon was... it was set to produce great and powerful magic, and I did not know it. This will not happen again."

"You have destroyed so much," Dresden said softly, surveying the scene. The re-settling smoke was mercifully returning. He could only see so far into the encroaching gloom.

"Dresden, I apologize for this. It was not my intention, I only wished to caution the enemy."

Dresden looked at Shah, and clenched at his helmet. "I think they have been 'cautioned' exceedingly well," he said, the color rising in his cheeks. "And what of our Hepsguard that were fleeing? Also 'cautioned'?"

"Dresden, they are dead, and I killed them," Shah replied. He had to be honest. "Anything within the path of my weapon has been destroyed, including many brave defenders of Hep Duatab. I am sorry. I am so very sorry. I assure you this will not happen again."

Tayra was getting to her feet now. "Are you with us or against us, outsider?" she asked.

Shah turned to face her. "I am with you, captain. But I am learning the extent of my powers, and have made a grave mistake. I ask that you forgive me."

"Forgive you?" she said, incredulous. She pointed in the direction of the destruction. "Forgive? How can we forgive this?!"

"It was an accident, captain. I'm sorry for it, but it was not intentional." He put his hands together, pleading. "I ask you to accept what I say. I did not mean to destroy so much, and I will do whatever is in my power to make amends." He glanced at Dresden before continuing: "On this, you have my word."

There was more movement within the wreckage. The other archer, Hela, who had warned them of the approaching brutes, was getting to her feet. Of the spearmen there was no sign, and Shah was positively sick with worry. They had been instructed to move to the front, and he'd fired the Rig over their heads. "I believe I may have also killed your spear-carriers, captain," he said.

Tayra's eyes widened. "Jeren! Mura!" she called out.

There was a moan from ahead of them, then a shifting of debris. A fire-tipped spear popped out, and Shah breathed yet another sigh of relief.

"Captain, I am trapped," the spearman replied.

Shah marched over to where the man lay, and began removing the large chunks of masonry and timber covering the soldier. He did so with an ease that was astounding to watch (energy consumption be danged, he thought), even throwing aside a half a wall that was trapping the Hepsguard.

"By the Highest... his strength..." Tayra said behind him.

"Huh?" Shah said. The Hepsguard was completely free now. Shah held his hand out and hauled the soldier to his feet. He had also seen the second spear carrier close by, lying against a broken post. This soldier was also conscious, but clearly dazed out of his wits. As he went to the second spearman, he looked back at the captain and Dresden.

Tayra had yet to put her helmet back on, and the anger that had previously been in her eyes – and in Dresden's eyes too, for that matter – had been replaced by frightened awe. Shah realized their stunned looks stemmed not only from what they had just experienced, but also from the way he'd casually removed the masonry from the pinned soldier, casting the material away as though the large pieces weighed nothing.

He helped the second soldier to their feet. "My thanks, outsider," the soldier said. "I seem to have lost my lance."

"It is okay, Hepsguard," Shah said. "If you stay behind me, you will not need it."

He approached Tayra and Dresden now, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. "Captain, Sire Faramay, I – I am learning my power here," he said. "And I remain truly sorry for my deed."

"You will have to answer for your actions, outsider," Tayra said, "but for now, it seems you may be of some assistance to us. I think... I believe we have no qualms with the likes of you. For now."

Shah lowered his hands. While he would remain remorseful for the destruction he had wrought, he was also genuinely thankful for her change of heart. "I will make reparations, captain," he said. "My deed will not go unpunished. And I will assist you in whatever way I can."

"Outsider, what is your name?" Dresden asked. He no longer looked as angry. In fact, Shah sensed a tendril of respect in his voice now.

"My name is Shah. And I remain sorry – "

"Do not keep apologizing, Shah. Make your reparations. Help us now."

"I shall."

Dresden turned to Tayra. "What are your orders? The outsider appears to have 'resolved' this quarter."

Tayra glanced once more at Shah, then turned to Dresden. "Re-group. Make our way to the Common." She put her helmet on. "The fight is not over, but the battle will end there. For now, has anyone seen my sword?"

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