Captive Souls (1-2)

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The Captive Souls Episodes of Pedigree of The Gladiators are written in collaboration with Dark Icon (Marc Washington).  In Captive Souls, Blaymore and Zade return with a vengeance to the kingdom of their birth and Nathaniel Ellis, the son and heir of their former master.  Since this is a collaborative work, the story also appears on Dark Icon's Captive Souls Page.  Click on the following link for a list of other stories on the Dark Icon page that feature the characters Zade and Blaymore. The most important of these for the sake of understanding Captive Souls is [Flashback] - The Hanging Tree.

[Pedigree]021 Captive Souls: The Monolith (1)
[Pedigree]022 Captive Souls: Speed Trap (2)

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[Pedigree]021 Captive Souls: The Monolith (1)

(This first chapter of Captive Souls was written entirely by Dark Icon but is included as a chapter of Pedigree for completeness.)

Heavy

That was the thought that skipped back and forth across the surface of Zade's mind as she stared into the darkness of the fireplace. That was the sensation that pressed her down into her chair despite the hundreds of other things she could have been doing... things that held no particular urgency or appeal, like lighting the fire or... or anything else.

She was tired. She was tired without actually BEING tired. Everything was a chore. Living was a chore; life was just another thing to be done. A toil to be endured... a series of unending tasks to be carried out while the weight of her own thoughts trailed behind her like a hundred-pound anchor-

-Zade let the imagery fall from her mind. Too painful. Too close. She had almost touched one of the dark, raw places in her mind... the places that she had shut off, even from the acknowledgement of their existence. Her past? It didn't exist. She allowed bits and pieces of it to float to the surface when absolutely necessary, but the ugly whole of it was kept safely submerged beneath whatever task or emergency filled her mind at any particular moment. She didn't think about her past. She thought AROUND it. Her thoughts flowed OVER and UNDER it, like a colony of ants building a nest around some ancient stone. But this stone hurt. Every time she brushed up against it, she felt the echoes of pain biting into her like a sting. She would jerk away and chastise herself for the mental misstep. Then she would change her pattern of thoughts to make sure it didn't happen again. But it did happen again. And it was happening more and more frequently as time went by... as...

...as the stone around her neck grew larger. The more she lived, the more there was to endure. And the more she endured, the larger the stone became... forcing her into more self-deceptions and mental gymnastics to keep the pain submerged. What would she do when the monolith grew too large to ignore? When it shrugged off her defenses and rose from her thoughts like a new continent? Would she pour more diversions and distractions over it in hopes that it would shrink away? Would she bash her tiny fists against it in futile hopes of beating it into submission? Or would she just... sit... and watch the nonexistent fire as her mind slipped away?

The last option didn't seem quite so bad...

Zade realized that she was skirting around a dangerous territory, so she pulled back. Maybe she should light a fire. Her eyes lifted from the dark mouth of the fireplace and rose to the mantle... where a majestic golden helmet rested, its empty eye-slit peering angrily down at her.

And the stone got larger.

She couldn't save him.

She couldn't save...

"Stop it," said Zade. She pressed her fist to her forehead as if forcing the thoughts back into the depths from which they'd sprang... unsummoned and unwanted. Her skin... smooth and brown... was moist with a thin sheen of sweat.

"Stop it," she said again, her voice fading from a command to a cry. "Just stop it!"

She took a deep breath and looked up, forcing the muscles of her face back into their proper places: a sneer, growling inwardly at the ball of emotion that had dared show itself. Not this time. She wasn't going to do it again. She wasn't going to let it get to her. She was Zade. She was strong. She wasn't a... wasn't...

...wasn't even human any more.

And the stone got larger.

The unbearable weight of it pulled her stomach in several directions at once. She wanted to run and hide... from? Herself? But at the same time, she yearned for an ear... a shoulder... a voice... someone she could talk to. Who? Who would understand? The 'people' who had cursed her? Their ridiculous so-called gods that had found her unworthy of remaining fully human?

No, certainly not.

The very thought made her want to laugh.

But there was another. Someone who was also cursed. Someone who had it worse than her, but had STILL managed to survive... to endure... HE could console her. HE could help her. He could... He could... l-

Zade's mind stuck at the word she dared not think. Her mind backed away from it, as if from a forbidden door. Taboo! Verboten! Keep away, Keep AWAY! And in the next instant, the door itself was forgotten. Gone. Removed and shut away... for the small price of just a few more measures of weight on the stone.

Perhaps it was time to move on.

That particular thought had come to her several times in the past few weeks. Often enough to earn her consideration. Not that she COULD leave... but...

She'd joined December because she needed work. Not money... she could GET money. She needed Work. Something to DO. The first year or so had been splendid. Sandwiched between dealing with Chain here in Montfort and bringing down Brinks in New Venyce was the constant action of establishing December's foot-hold in the city. But that activity had tapered off after New Venyce. Zade knew why. So did December, though he wouldn't admit it. Zade didn't mind the respite at first. She welcomed it. A vacation AFTER her 'vacation.' She played bodyguard for a while... that WAS her job, after all. But it was unnecessary. It was a sham. A fake. December was perhaps the most well-protected man in the city even without her. All she did was stand around and pretend to protect him while he pretended she was necessary. But after a while, the inactivity began to get to her. She needed... she needed something to do. She needed something to fill the space between her thoughts... a buffer to keep them from rubbing up against that black monolith in her mind.

But December wouldn't let her go. And she didn't want to go. Especially now that-

-now that what? Now that she wasn't human? Now that she'd demonstrated her incompetence at everything except killing? Now that she was...

And the stone...got... heavier...

Zade sighed. And... not finding anything else she wanted to do... she sighed again.

The second sigh partially masked the approaching footsteps... but she heard them anyway. Outside, someone was approaching her door. No... not approaching; they were already there. Too fast. And the scent...

Zade felt the growl in her throat before she even realized she was making it. It was a deep, guttural sound. The muscles of her fingers and forearms clenched into angry fists.

There was a knock at the door. The first knock was slow and reluctant... almost a scratch. The second had more force behind it, as if the first knock was just a test of the unwanted guest's resolve. Both were uncharacteristic for the man that Zade knew was standing outside. Even the fact that there WAS a knock struck Zade as suspicious. The house was new, and Zade hadn't bothered to get December's mage to place the wards yet. With nothing to keep him out, her guest would usually just walk through the walls... entering without invitation or announcement.

But this time, he knocked.

Zade's fists unclenched. Slightly.

"Go away," she said, turning toward the door but not getting up. She was curious about her guest's intention... but not THAT curious. "Leave me alone."

She waited a moment longer than she thought necessary... and then showed no surprise when the figure of a man appeared in the room, walking through the door as if it, or he, were only a figment of her imagination. Blaymore was dressed as he always was... Zade didn't know whether to call it an 'costume,' and 'outfit,' or a 'uniform'. His bright blue cloak concealed much of his body, revealing only the shape of his shoulders and rare glimpses of the solid-black clothes he wore beneath it. The cloak's hood threw a shadow over his face. A blue cloth stretched across his nose, mouth, and chin, concealing what little of his face would have been visible. All that remained was his eyes: tiny, multicolored lanterns glowing brightly within the depths.

That was really all there was to Blaymore. Glowing eyes, a few parlor tricks and an oversized blue cloak. But he also had a penchant for showing up when least expected and ruining whatever happiness Zade had managed to scrape together for herself. Well, he was too late this time. Zade had no happiness to ruin.

"Trespassing," Zade said. She turned away from him, not wanting to give him any more acknowledgement than was absolutely necessary. She stared at the fireplace instead. "I'll add that to the long list of things I'm going to kill you for."

"A man can only die once," Blaymore said. "And sometimes not even then."

Whatever words or thoughts Zade had prepared to throw at him next, caught in her throat like a burr.

His voice.

Blaymore usually spoke with a deep sonorous roll to his voice... a practiced effort that added more menace to his words. He was using it now, as he always did. Yet, there was something else... a strained, reluctant warble, as if he were making an effort just to speak. Not a physical effort... a mental one.

And there was a strange scent in the air. Zade's heightened senses were new to her; she wouldn't have been able to detect it at all if she were still completely human. But she wasn't, and her lupine sense of smell detected the emotions wafting out from beneath Blaymore's cloak as easily as reading words from a scroll... not because her senses were THAT acute, but because the emotions were frighteningly intense. Blaymore smelt almost like fear... but that wasn't exactly it. It was something close. Pain. Pain and anger and... and something she didn't have words for.

Zade's head was half-turned before she caught herself. She stopped and returned her gaze to the fireplace, once again keeping her curiosity in check.

"We have to talk," he said. The warble in his voice was more distinct now.

Zade frowned.

"I don't want to talk," she replied. "And if I did... it wouldn't be with you. Get out."

She heard him take a step toward her. One step. Then he stopped.

She listened to his breathing. He seemed to make several attempts before finally bringing himself to speak again. When he did, his voice was higher... more strained.

"Zade..." he began, his words almost pleading with her. He paused, then added. "Bethsaida."

Zade winced at the sound of her name. She hadn't used that name in many years. She and Blaymore had both had different names then. But they'd left those names behind. Zade had buried hers along with the memories of the times when she answered to it. Hearing it now, from HIS lips, was like a slap in the face. Or a piercing stab to the heart.

"I have to..." he said. His voice as slowly transforming to match the scent that she caught from him. Each syllable was a tangled knot of emotion. "I have to tell you something."

"What is it?" said Zade. "Tell me and go away."

"Come with me."

"What?" This time, Zade did turn and look. She looked at Blaymore as if he were insane... the very IDEA that she would go somewhere with him-

"Please," he added. "Please, Beth... please come with me. I have to show you..."

"Show me WHAT?" she snapped.

"Please."

The single word was almost a whisper.

It was a trick. Zade KNEW it was a trick. Blaymore was a cowardly bastard that wasn't above lying and manipulating people to get what he wanted. But it wasn't going to work. Not now. Not any more.

"You have something to say? Say it."

"No. Not here. I can't... I can't risk it."

"Risk WHAT!?"

"Please, Beth..."

Blaymore reached up and grasped the edge of the cloth hiding his face. He tugged it down so that it hung loosely around his neck, then he swept the hood back from his head... revealing his face to Zade. The face that Zade literally had not seen in years.

Her brother's face.

The weight grew heavier.

Zade had to look away for a second because she couldn't take the sight of him all at once. When she looked back, she saw that his eyes were red... from tears or irritation, Zade couldn't tell. His lips were trembling. He tightened his jaw... making a visible effort to hold whatever emotion bubbled within him in check.

"...please." Michael extended his hand. "Come with me."

Zade stood up.

She still wore her form-fitting leather suit... commonly called 'armor,' though it served very little toward that purpose. She'd undone a few of the clasps, but she quickly refastened them and reached for her weapons belt. It rested on the table beside her, along with her metal bracers and her black leather whip. She armed herself, then nodded.

She heard Blaymore whisper something... a series of words that departed his lips too fast to be more than a chirp to her ears. Then, Blaymore vanished. He was still there; he was merely invisible.

"The shanties at the edge of town," he said, his voice coming from the empty air in front of her. "There's an abandoned section. An old building with no roof..."

"I know where it is," said Zade.

"Meet me there."

There was a rustle, and a slight gust of wind as Blaymore left... passing through the door just as he had entered. Zade had to make the more mundane effort of actually OPENING the door. She closed and locked it behind her, then looked up at the sky. It was late evening. The sun was about a half-hour away from the horizon. It would be almost dark by the time she got where she was going. Blaymore would be there already. He was probably there now, unless he had a few dozen stops to make along the way.

Zade thought about turning around and going back inside. But she remembered his face. Not the look on his face... but the face ITSELF. His face.

She started walking, her long legs and determined steps carrying her toward the shanties at the edge of town.

---

There was still quite a bit of sunlight left when she found the place. The shanties were a collection of hovels, huts, and shacks where Montfort's poorer citizens tried to live. Zade rarely came to this part of town. The places they lived, the conditions they endured... it was too much like-

-like something Zade didn't care to remember.

There was a semi-circle of abandoned and semi-abandoned buildings that acted as a buffer between the derelicts and the city proper. Most of them were the remains of old shops that had been burned during the disaster a few years ago... the same disaster that spawned most of the shanty-town's residence. One of the buildings was still mostly intact. Only the roof and a small section of the front wall were damaged... creating a structure reminiscent of an open-topped box. Zade had to squeeze through the 'door'... a pile of rubble and boards... to entered the old store.

She could see the sky above her: a field of bluish red, pierced by the jutting wooden planks that were all that remained of the ceiling. There was nothing in the store but rubble, trash, and the reeking remains of some dead animal.

Something on the floor caught Zade's eye. A gleam. Several gleams.

Metal.

Several metal rods rested on the floor near the crumbling wall. There were more than a dozen, each was about seven feet long. Staves? No... too heavy. There were also some oddly-shaped metal bits that didn't look like weapons of any kind. They looked like pieces of something. Or rather, pieces of several somethings.

And they all looked new. They certainly didn't belong here.

"I had them fabricated," said Blaymore. He appeared beside her, his invisibility fading away as he canceled his spell.

"What are they?" she said, still looking around. She noticed that the ground where she was standing... next to the metal rods... was unusually flat. She noticed it too late.

Blaymore moved.

The wind roared around Zade like a tornado as he circled her again and again, grabbing things from the floor and jamming them into place. One at a time, the metal rods rose like the stalks of strange plants... jutting perfectly straight from the holes in the metal plate below Zade's feet. A darkness fell across her as another plate... actually several smaller plates that were fastened together... settled onto the top of the bars. It probably would have taken a normal man an hour to assemble all the pieces. For Blaymore, it was nearly instantaneous... By the time Zade realized what Blaymore was doing... he had already done it. He had built a cage. There was no way he could ever lure her INTO one... so he had built one AROUND her!

Now he stood before her, staring at her from beyond the bars. His hood and mask were still lowered, and that made Zade all the more furious.

"You... BASTARD!" Zade spat. She felt the trembling in her gut... the ache in her joints and the prickling of her skin as the rage began to surface. "YOU BASTARRD!"

"I'm sorry, Beth," he said softly. He looked at her with apologetic eyes. "I didn't want to do this to you. But there's no other way. I'm so sorry..."

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!!"

"You're not trapped," said Blaymore. "There are at least a dozen ways for someone to get out of that cage. For... a HUMAN... to get out. But if you change-"

Zade glanced at the cage. Blaymore was right. It was sturdy, but there were ways she could take it apart from the inside. But she could ONLY do it as a human. If she transformed, she'd be just another caged animal. She'd be stuck in the cage until she changed back.

But it was already too late. She was changing. Her fingers were shortening...shrinking. Her back was cramping as the bones began to shift-

She had to stop it. She had to calm down. She backed away from the bars and took as many deep breaths as her tightening lungs and constricting throat would allow.

Slowly... slooowly... the change stopped. It backed away as she got control of her rage. Human. Calm. She had to stay human, or she would be stuck... had to stay calm...

She grabbed one of the bars. She could unscrew it, but her fingers were still... clumsy. She had to calm down...

"Your little trick is a bit too late," she said. "The full moon was LAST week."

"I know... It's not the moon, it's... Beth, when I found out, I could hardly... I.... when I tell you..."

Blaymore took a step toward the cage and looked straight into Zade's eyes.

His look... the expression... the pain... it made Zade back away. The pain in his eyes pushed her back just as surely as if he'd reached in and shoved her.

"...Beth..." he was struggling to contain himself. Zade could only watch as he forced himself to say what he had brought her here to hear. The practiced menace in his voice was completely gone now. Now he was just a man. A man suffering under some unspoken turmoil that he still couldn't bring himself to say.

"Beth," he repeated. He lowered his face and rubbed his fingers over his forehead. When he looked up again-

"...Michael?" said Zade. The name came to her lips as a gasp. This wasn't Blaymore. She'd never seen Blaymore like this... with tears in his eyes, and face twisted by so much pain. This wasn't him. This was the boy who'd existed before there was a Blaymore... This was Michael. This was her brother.

"He's still alive," he said. He was whispering, not from any need for secrecy, but because it was the only sound he could make.

"Who?" said Zade.

"Him. HIM, Beth... HIM! The man who... Oh, gods help me, I can't even say it...

"Dammit, WHO!?"

"He's still alive, Beth. He's still alive and he's still... torturing slaves. Beth, the man who killed our mother... The Overseer... Grady... is alive."

Zade felt everything drain out of her. The name... THAT name...

THAT man!

...still... alive...

If it had been a physical occurrence, it would have been accompanied by the roaring crash of water against the shore... but there was no water. Yet, the ocean of everything that Zade was... everything she'd ever thought and felt... suddenly emptied itself. The sea drained away to nothing... revealing the Thing. Uncovered and revealed in all its horrible glory, black Monolith lay exposed for the first time since Zade had covered it up. It was all there. The pain. The torture. The death. The murder and the rape.

Zade was an empty shell. Stunned out of her senses, Zade swayed back and forth in the cage as her mind reeled.

...still... alive...

Perhaps encouraged by the fact that Zade had yet to transform, Michael continued speaking.

"Jallan is alive as well," he said. "Maybe others, too. And... and... I don't know if its the same man... but... they both work for... for someone named... named 'Ellis.'"

Zade shrieked.

She screamed as if the skin were being pulled off of her body. Now it was Michael's turn to back away.

The sight of the monolith had caused her to snap. Her empty shell was now filled with sharp shards of memories spinning in a whirlwind of rage. Zade charged the bars and thrust her clawed hand out at Michael. Her face was already transforming... her nose and mouth lengthening into a canine snout as her joints re-made themselves...

"WHERE ARRRE THEY! WHERRRE ARRE THEY!!!"

"The same place they've always been. They never left. They're still... right... there..."

"LET ME OUT OF THIS CAGE RIGHT NOW GODS-DAMN YOU!!!!" Zade growled... every word more guttural than the last. "LET ME OUT OR I SWEARR BY EVERY GOD I KNOW... I'LL SELL MY SOUL TO SEE YOU DEAD, MICHAEL, I SWEARRR!!! I SWEARRRRR!!!"

"I know," said Michael. "I know. But its safer for you here. And I have something to swear as well..."

Michael tugged his mask back up onto his face. He grasped the edge of his hood and pulled up, plunging his face into shadow once more. His eyes began to flicker... then glow with a light that burned in fierce shades of red and green.

"...if I have to run to the ends of Iffrean this very night," said Blaymore. Not Michael... Blaymore. The menace had returned to his voice, and it was now stronger than it had ever been. "Their blood will run in rivers out of whatever hole they've crawled into. If the hanging tree still stands, I will decorate it with their entrails, stringing them so fast that they'll be able to see it with their own eyes before they die. By the time you get out of that cage, they will all be dead. All of them. They will pay, Beth.... for what they did to us. To you. This, I swear."

His oath made, Blaymore faded away to nothing and was gone.

Zade saw him leave. His words echoed in the fading remnants or her mind... piercing the cloud of emotion and stoking its fires higher still. She howled in fury... a fury that no animal could ever know. No wolf could understand the monolith of pain. An animal could not know vengeance. Not of this kind... not of this DEPTH. Protection? Fear? Anger? Hunger? None of the animal emotions came close. Wrath? Hatred? NO! This was a raw and flaming VENGEANCE that needed a HUMAN mind to grasp it.... a HUMAN mind to conceive and dream of it... and a HUMAN mind to carry it out. The fleeting spark that was Zade's humanity seized upon this vengeance... feeding on it and growing stronger, like an infant at its mother's breast.

Zade howled again... but this time the howl warbled and weakened. Her lupine eyes closed... and human eyes opened as her muscles twisted painfully, caught somewhere in between the two forms...

Vengeance.

Human Vengeance.

Zade stood up and gathered the clothing and weapons that had fallen off somewhere during the transformation. Then, without a sound, she grasped the bars and began to unscrew them one at a time...

---

The store was closed, but Zade stormed up to the door... charging through the faint scents of the patrons and visitors. She unlocked it with her key, then threw the door open as she entered.

"Oh!" Theesa yelped. The small blonde woman had been re-arranging the diamond display... again. She turned suddenly at the intrusion, then realizing when she saw that it was just Zade. "Zade? I thought you'd left for the eveni-"

"Get Out." Zade said sharply.

"Excuse me?"

"GET! OUT!"

Theesa's eyes widened. She glanced at the door to the back room.

"Ummm.... Is there something wrong?"

"Perhaps Zade wishes to speak to me privately," said a deep voice that reminded Zade a lot of Blaymore's. This was much deeper, however... and came from a much larger man. December paused at the entrance to the back room, his huge frame taking up much of the doorway. He stood proudly and defiantly, despite the white hair and pale skin that marked him as a human oddity... much more so than Zade. Zade didn't need to hear his voice to know when he entered... she could feel the temperature in the room drop several degrees the instant he crossed the threshold. December was literally sucking the heat out of the air in a process that he could control somewhat, but never stop completely.

Zade faced him. She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

December stepped aside and nodded at the back room.

"Theesa?" he said.

Theesa gave him a foul glance. She said nothing as she left, but the look on her face screamed loudly: 'I will not be dismissed like a child or a servant... and we WILL talk about this later!' She closed the door behind her, not slamming it... but not closing it quietly either.

"I have to leave," Zade said immediately. "Now. Tonight. Right now."

"And where are you going?" December said in his usual stoic calm.

Zade paused. She couldn't bring herself to say the name. She hadn't so much as THOUGHT it in years.

"Home," she said instead.

"Is this... business? Or pleasure?"

"Both," said Zade. "When I arrive, I'm going to start killing people. I'm not going to stop until someone kills ME, or until I run out of people. That answer your question?"

"Indeed," said December. The brief glimpse of expression on his face told Zade that maybe... just maybe... he understood. But he needed to understand something ELSE, as well...

"I didn't come to you to ask permission," she said. "I'm AM going. You have no say in that. None at all."

"I never said I did," said December. "But, if not for permission, why DID you come to me?"

"I need help to get there."

"Surely I pay you enough for-"

"A coach? A ship? No, you misunderstand. When I said was leaving tonight, I meant I need to ARRIVE tonight as well."

"That would require magic," said December. "I am sure that, for a price, Lovvorn would-"

"NO! Not Lovvorn. I never liked OR trusted that drunk. If YOU do, then that's your business... but I don't want him involved in mine."

"What do you propose, then?"

"You have another mage. I don't know if I trust him either, but if the order comes from YOU, I know he'll do it. If he wants to be paid, he can have everything I own. Even my soul, if he wants it."

"Is it as serious as that?"

"Yes. It is."

"Very well," said December. "N'Doki will grant your wish. Without payment. Your service to me is payment enough. Go to him and he will send you on your way."

Zade nodded. This had been easier than she expected.

"When I'm done-" she began.

"You will return to me," said December. Zade didn't know if he was giving her an order, or merely finishing her sentence for her. It was probably both. "Your job will be waiting for you. As will I."

"You realize that I may not survive this," she said. "If it comes down to my life and killing the ones that I'm after... my life isn't nearly important enough to let them live."

"I understand," said December. "That is why I am not concerned about your safety... or about letting you go."

He must have seen the confusion on Zade's face. He explained:

"If you are to die, then I know will be for a reason we both consider worthy."

"How do you know what my reason is?"

"I do not need to know. YOU know... and I trust you."

"Well..." said Zade, not quite sure what to make of December's words. "I'll be seeing you. Maybe."

She walked out. She knew without looking back that December was watching her go.

---

The cemetery.

Montfort had no shortage of places to respectfully... and Respectfully... bury its dead. Some were the small neglected tombs of long-extinct families. Others were large, complicated affairs.

THIS cemetery was a cross between the two, taking the worst parts of both and turning them into something truly horrid.

It was not huge, but it was large enough to be eerie. When one stood near its center at night, there was nothing but old, decaying graves as far as the eye could see.

N'Doki's home... lair... sanctum... whatever, lay far beneath, at the heart of a network of catacombs. The sanctum had been breached once not long ago, but even after that violation, N'Doki chose not to move to a more secure location. So, barring any unforseen developments, Zade would have to take the same route that Chain and his raiders had taken.

There was an above-ground crypt near the heart of the cemetery. An old, gnarled tree jutted from the ground beside it. The massive stone door was slightly ajar, leading into a small, musty space... at the rear of which was another door, this one of iron. The door was new... a replacement for the one that had been demolished earlier.

This door was also ajar.

It appeared that Zade was expected.

That was good. Perhaps she wouldn't have to kill her way through whatever protectors N'Doki had summoned to guard this place. If there was one thing N'Doki could do well... it was summon lots of very unpleasant things. It seemed to be his specialty. But if he was expecting her, perhaps he put all his nasties on a leash for the night.

Or perhaps not.

Zade decided it was best to be prepared. She had all her weapons with her. Or at least all the weapons she intended to take. Taking them ALL would require several extra people to her carry them. A large, sharp hunting knife hung from her belt. On the opposite hip hung the coils of her black leather whip. The whip had a thin metal cord running down the center, beneath the leather. The metal reduced the whip's flexibility somewhat, but it made the weapon much more damaging... and devastating when used with one of the bladed metal tips that she carried on her belt. She also carried a pouch of shuriken: razor-sharp missiles that she could put through a man's throat with the flick of a wrist. She wore the metal bracers on her wrists more for convenience than protection. The items were enchanted; the runes carved into its surface could contain items... keeping them in some magical pocket until she retrieved them with just a touch. They couldn't hold anything as large as a staff or a bastard sword, but had no problem with the enchanted crossbow and extra knives she had stored in them now. The small backpack hanging from her shoulder held the few non-lethal items she needed: rope, a grappling hook, torches, and other supplies. She usually carried healing herbs and bandages with her on her expeditions... but those were unnecessary now that she was... wasn't human.

"All right," she said as she drew her hunting knife. The weapon had a 14-inch blade... and part of its length was serrated with evil-looking teeth. She held it tightly as she pulled the door open. Beyond it was a dark stone stairway that wound its way downward into the bowels of the cemetery. She reached for a torch from her pack, then realized she didn't need it. There was a small amount of light coming from... from some source Zade couldn't identify. The walls weren't glowing... and neither was the floor or the ceiling. Strange.

Zade shrugged and started down.

Zade expected the catacombs to be eerily silent. They weren't... which made them even MORE eerie. There were strange sounds and smell all around her... all the time... growing more persistent with every step she took. At times, she was absolutely convinced there was something following her. But when she turned to look behind her, there was nothing there. She also heard the unmistakable sounds of things moving around behind the walls. Not rats or vermin... something much larger. Occasionally, large cracks in the stone gave her glimpses into the darkness beyond. She never saw anything; but she always heard them. The stairs ended at a hallway, and the hallway stretched on for longer than Zade cared to consider... it certainly seemed larger than the cemetery. The cracks in the walls grew larger as she went, and eventually she came to one that was so large that it was more like a doorway than a crack. It stretched from floor to ceiling, and an odd mixture of smells floated out of the space beyond. Scented candles. Incense. Dust. And the faint trace of death.

This was the place.

Zade stepped through the crevice

There had been nothing but darkness before, but the instant she crossed the threshold, a dim light flooded the space around her. The light didn't just come on... it had always been there. She just couldn't see it from outside the chamber.

N'Doki's sanctum was mostly empty... unless she counted the knots of shadows huddling in the corners like living, solid things. There was a large bonfire in the center of the room. Zade couldn't tell what was burning... but it smelled horrible. The outer edges of the room seemed to swallow the flame's light, hiding the walls and the room's true size from Zade's eyes.

N'Doki stood before the fire like some decrepit scarecrow, his emaciated figure seemed so thin and frail that any sudden burst of heat from the fire would knock him over. He wore only a loincloth, leaving his leathery skin and bald head to gleam in the firelight. He looked like something that belonged in one of the graves above... or something that had escaped from one. Each of his fingers ended in a sharp talon. Zade had heard that N'Doki had undergone several changes in appearance since he started working with December.... she couldn't imagine what he looked like before.

N'Doki looked up from the fire. His eyes were red... not glowing, just incredibly bloodshot. For a few moments he appeared to be staring past Zade... looking at something behind her. She was just about to turn around and look when his eyes focused on her. He smiled. All of the necromancer's teeth had been filed down to sharp, carnivorous points.

"Ahhh, 'tis not often dat N'Doki receive guests..." he said. He spoke with a thick accent that Zade always thought sounded familiar, but she knew she'd never heard anyone speak with it before.

"This isn't a social call," Zade said quickly. "I want-"

"You want to go to de place of your chilehood... and you want N'Doki so send you dere, no?"

Zade wasn't surprised that he knew what she wanted. December certainly had time to send word to him while she was gathering her supplies... but she doubted that was how he knew. N'Doki had his own methods of learning things. His methods, and motives, were usually not to be questioned except by December himself.

"Yes," she admitted. "December said that you would send me-"

"Tell me, girl... why you bodder N'Doki wit such a t'ing, when dere be plenty in Montfort who will do it for you, hmmm?"

"Why ask why? Either you'll do it or you won't. Will you?"

"Answer de question, girl." The necromancer's words were neither a command nor a request... but a curious juxtaposition of both.

"This is personal, and important. I'm not going to trust my business with just anybody. NOW will you send me?"

N'Doki stared at her, as if seeking some answer from her face, or her clothes... or some other means other than her words. Then he nodded, as if he had found it.

"I will send you," he said finally.

"Do you even know where-"

"Yes. I am... familiar... wit dis place you seek."

"Familiar," said Zade. Now it was HER turn to stare.... her turn to look for answers. But whatever means N'Doki had used, she lacked it. All she got from looking at him was a chill running down her back.

"How old are you?" she asked. "Where are you from?"

N'Doki raised an eyebrow... or rather, a patch of skin where an eyebrow should be.

"Why you ask such a t'ing," he said, smiling. He seemed more amused than suspicious.

Zade held up her fist, with the back of her hand facing him. She pointed to her hand... pointed to the skin... brown skin... that was only a few shades lighter than N'Doki's.

"This is why," she said. "You were one of us, weren't you?"

"You assume much," the necromancer began.

"I assume right," Zade snapped. "I am right, aren't I? You were there... maybe not at the same time... or the same place. One of the neighboring kingdoms, maybe, but you were there."

"I was," said N'Doki. "N'Doki was of de first generation... de first-born of dose who were stolen from far lands and enslaved for de benefit of odders."

"That can't be. That was hundreds of... years..."

Zade looked at the necromancer, and a new chill slid down her spine. Was he THAT old? If he was, then what was he doing HERE, working for December? And if he WAS a slave so long ago, then...

"Why didn't you stop it? It's still going on, today. With all your power, why-"

"N'Doki has no power. De power you mistake for N'Doki's comes from de spirits dat I serve. I cannot do dat which dey do not wish to be done."

"Come with me, then," said Zade. "You were one of us. We can destroy them together. All of 'em. You must surely hate them as much as I do."

"More dan you know, girl. N'Doki IS hatred... odder t'ings, too, but mostly de hatred. But I cannot come wit you."

"Why? Are you afraid?"

N'Doki's deep laugh echoed around the room like a sound of a distant thunderclap.

"Afraid, girl?" said N'Doki "You do not insult N'Doki by saying dis t'ing... you merely reveal your own ignorance. N'Doki knows t'ings dat you do not. T'ings of prophecy and power. N'Doki must remain here because soon dere will be an event dat... ahh, but dis does not concern you yet. Now... now it is YOUR time."

"My time? What the hell does that mean-?"

"Yours is not to understand... yours it merely to act according to your nature. You wish de spirits to send you on your way? Dey will do so with pleasure. You wish N'Doki's help-"

"I don't need your help."

"You will have it. You will need it... de spirits haf said it to be true..."

N'Doki snapped his fingers... making a dry, crisp sound.

The shadows in the room began to stir. Zade caught sight of several things moving toward her from the corners of the room. She couldn't make out their form or even their size, only that they were there and moving in her direction.

Zade backed away a step. She still had her knife in her hand, and she was not afraid. She watched the things as they approached. As they moved out of the shadows... they vanished. At the very instant before the light reached them... before their shapes were to be revealed... they were gone. Yet, they were still there. Zade still felt movement in the room. Something brushed past her. Not a solid thing... but not liquid or gas, either. Whatever it was, it was cold.

She felt something else move in front of her, traveling in the opposite direction as the first.

Two more followed... and then the room was still. Zade didn't know why she looked down, but she did. There, at her feet, were four objects. The invisible 'things' must have left them there as they passed. The first was a bone.... a human leg-bone that had been carved into a spike.... well-suited for driving into the heart of someone or something. Beside it lay a tiny pouch, of the type Zade used to keep herbs and other healing mixtures. Next was a wooden statue. It was a small grotesque thing with the rough shape of a man... but with fangs, horns, and several other protrusions that didn't belong on anything human. The details of the carving were a bit TOO realistic. The final object was a rock or stone of some kind. It was slightly larger than a man's fist, and its surface was horribly gnarled and pitted, with several wickedly sharp ridges running along its roughly oblong shape. Zade couldn't tell if it were an actual stone, or perhaps the petrified shell of some creature.

Zade glanced at the items, but made no effort to pick them up. In fact, she took another step back... away from them.

"What are these?" she asked.

"Gifts from your ancestors," said N'Doki. "Take dem. You will find dem useful."

"Yeah... but what ARE they?"

"You will not know," said N'Doki. "Even when de time comes to use dem, you will not know. But DEY will know..." N'Doki pointed to the strange collection.

"What if I don't want them?"

"Consider dem a condition of my helping you, yes?"

"Fine."

Zade picked them up. They felt odd in her hands... heavy and off-balance, especially the stone. The pouch was filled with a small amount of very fine powder. It had a strong, herbal scent to it. Zade recognized the smell as a powerful healing mixture. She put it and the other items in her pack, with the full intention of ditching them as soon as she got where she was going.

"Any more 'conditions'?" she asked.

"Only one," said N'Doki.

"And that is...?"

"Dat you show your enemies only as much mercy as dey haf shown you."

Zade laughed.

N'Doki laughed with her.

Zade felt something touch her. Before she could react, the thing had seized her arm... and several other things had grabbed her legs and wrapped around her waist.

She stopped laughing.

Zade saw nothing around her, but she felt the presence of hands all over her body... touching... grasping... pulling...

"HEY, WHAT IS THIS!!" Zade tried to slash with her hunting knife, but her arm was held motionless... extended in mid air and held as stiff as an iron bar. More and more invisible hands roamed over her body, seeking purchase in the folds of her clothing. They yanked her back and forth, as if fighting for her.... or tearing her apart. "N'DOKI!"

"De bankita do not care for your flesh," said the necromancer. "Dey only seek a firm grasp. De places you will travel between here and dere... dark places...one does not want to be dropped, no?"

"...bankita?" The word rattled Zade's memories... loosening something that she had hidden away. Bantika? What did that word mean-

Suddenly, N'Doki's spirits took her. They didn't move her in any physical direction, yet Zade felt their grasps tighten, and then saw the world tear away from her. Not only did the ground beneath her boots vanish, but entire sanctum... and Montfort itself... simply ceased to exist. She was moving at an incredible speed... flying high above some place that did not belong on Iffrean, a place inhabited by things that were not meant to be seen with mortal eyes. Zade closed her eyes and tried not to scream as the rough wind tore violently at her clothes. Were it not for the presence of the spirits all around her, she would have lost every one of her weapons to the hellish landscape below. But she didn't. They held her aloft and kept her moving faster and faster... and faster...

And just when Zade thought the wind was going to burn the skin off of her face...

...the spirits let her go.

----+======+++======+----  

 

[Pedigree]022 Captive Souls: Speed Trap (2)

"RATTLESNAKES, ya say!?" Borris scratched his brow in lazy disbelief at the captain's words.

"Aye," said Captain Hezra. He took his eyes off the distant black shape just long enough to nod at his first mate. "Whole slew of 'em! Tossed that boy in da pit and he musta got bit five... six dozen times, they say!"

"Naaaah!" Borris spat a wad of phlegm onto the deck. "That was true, he wouldn't be breathin' air!"

"You don't believe me, go looks for yerself," said Borris. "Got the wounds ta prove it, he does! I seen 'em!"

"Ehhh, he coulda got them any old kinda way!"

"SNAKEBITES, I tell ya! DOZENS of 'em! They say the boy's immune! That's why Ellis wants him- special delivery!"

"Ain't no such thing," Borris mused. He glanced at his bottle of whisky and, finding it not quite empty, drained the last mouthful with a gulp and a satisfied growl. He wiped his mouth with the back of his grimy hand. "No such thing," he said again.

"Not believin' it don't stop it from bein' true," said Hezra. He squinted at the shape in front of them. "Better tighten up... we'll be there soon.

"About time," said Borris. He got up... stretched... then sat back down again. "Hell, I swear that island gets further away every time we make this trip..."

Behind them, standing at the top of the stairs leading to the cargo hold, Blaymore waited... silently watching the two men with rapt attention. He had been invisible when he'd snuck aboard, but there wasn't any need to waste the magic now. The 'captain' and his first mate weren't exactly drunk... but they weren't exactly sober either.

And besides... if they noticed him, he'd just kill them. Which is what he'd planned on doing anyway.

They were slave traders. Or rather, slave-SHIPPERS, making special 'cargo' runs from the mainland to the large island that was Blaymore's destination. Blaymore had encountered the vessel by chance, after having run untold miles just to reach the town where he... where the boy that he once WAS... had been born. It was the furthest and fastest he had run in many, many years. His legs still throbbed painfully from the effort. His calves were like knotted ropes beneath his skin. His feet bled in his boots; his soles burned like a thousand angry wasps plunging their stings into him... a biting chorus of pain. The boots themselves were worn almost to nothing despite the enchantments that protected them. The enchantment could not keep up with him. Not tonight. It had fizzled out barely a mile from town, and, by the time he'd run the remaining distance, Blaymore was trailing smoke from his bubbling, scorched heels. His blue cloak, likewise enchanted, was frayed at the edges.

 Blaymore didn't care. Not about his clothes, or about the pain. None of

it mattered now... now that he was so close.

Now that he could SEE.

The island loomed before them, its sheer cliffs rising up out of the water like... like some ancient monolith. The cliffs were at least 200 feet high, with no sign of any beach or natural port. There was, however, a manmade port: a large floating dock anchored just off of the cliff walls. There were guards... lights... and a strange mobile contraption that rose up along the height of the cliff. Any details beyond these were lost in the distance and darkness, but what he saw was more than enough to identify the old Porterwood Orchard. He had never seen it with his own eyes before, but he knew what it was. Or rather, what it HAD been. It was something different now. He'd gotten his information from a group of thieves posing as merchants... a group of thieves that had actually BEEN merchants at one time, in a far-away, but familiar place. This place. They had only to mention its name, and Blaymore had descended on them like a howling storm.

He didn't make them tell him what they knew. He made them SCREAM it.

The island was still an orchard... it still bore fruit, but now of a different kind. It was a training ground for slaves. Slaves who would work, fight, breed, and die for the entertainment and profit of their masters. Slavery in Atlanna had transformed into something else over the years... something worse. Something darker. And one of the chief purveyors of it was the man who owned this island. It was no longer Porterwood... it belonged to a name with which Blaymore was intimately familiar: Ellis.

There were other names that went with it: Jallan the alchemist and Grady the overseer. How the old alchemist had managed to stay alive this long was probably a testament to both his skill and his evil. The fact that he and Grady still worked together for a member of House Ellis made Blaymore's expectations exponentially worse. Actually, Blaymore didn't know WHAT to expect when he arrived.... but he knew what would be left when he was done.

It was all Blaymore could do to keep his fury down to a low boil as the island get closer. He left the two half-drunks to their duties and crept down the stairs. His feet sent jolts of pain up his legs with each step, but Blaymore ignored them.

There was one 'guard' in the cargo bay. A large round-bellied man who'd fallen asleep in his chair at the bottom of the stairs. Blaymore continued past him without even bothering to turn invisible. There were six metal cages on either side of the bay. The cages were small, each barely large enough for a child... yet each one held a full-grown man who's hands and feet were bound with rope. The ropes, and the cages themselves, twisted the slaves into awkward and painful positions that would have been challenging even for a professional contortionist.

Blaymore stopped at the first pair of cages and looked out at the row of pain stretched before him. This was an unusually small load for a slave ship. But the slaves themselves weren't usual. All were adult males. Most were larger and more muscular than average... which, of course, only added to their discomfort. Two were significantly smaller. The cage to Blaymore's right held a frail thing wrapped in bandages. The bandages were bloody... but not overly so. The wounds they protected were small...

<<Rattlesnake bites?>> Blaymore thought.

Further down the bay was another smallish slave. He, like all the others, was naked. Though the slave was short, his muscles were very well developed. He had the body of a runner.

All of the slaves except this one were asleep. The runner lifted his head as much as he could, given the smallness of his cage. His eyes widened when he saw Blaymore standing at the mouth of the cargo bay... staring at him.

"...the angel of death..." the slave gasped. The gasp was not one of fear, but of relief. "The angel of death has come to take us."

The slave next to him awakened, saw Blaymore, and said nothing.

"No," said Blaymore, his voice dripping with deep menace. "The angel of death has come to free you."

At the very mention of the word 'free' the two slaves drew back from the bars and regarded Blaymore with stark terror. Their fear was contagious. In a moment, the other slaves were awake.

The fat guard mumbled something in his sleep. His eyes fluttered... then

opened wide when Blaymore grabbed the man by the throat.

"A-"

Blaymore drove the heel of his right hand upward into the base of the guard's nose. At normal speed, the blow would have been fatal. Clean, but fatal nonetheless. At the speed at which Blaymore's hand was moving, the blow pulverized the guard's skull and sent a spray of blood and other matter splattering across the wall behind the man. Blaymore snatched up the man's weapons: a whip, a knife, and a crossbow. He tossed them into the cages of the largest, healthiest-looking slaves. Then he used the guard's keys to free them.

"Your fate is in your own hands now," said Blaymore as he walked down the length of the corridor and stood by the rear wall. "Make of it what you will. But know that there is no such thing as a bold slave. Nor are there any free cowards... in this world or in any other."

"Who are you?" one of the men asked.

Blaymore turned back toward them, eyes flickering in the dim light.

"Who do you think I am?" he said.

Before they could answer, Blaymore was gone. There was no door before him...just a solid wall, yet he passed through it as easily as wind through a lace curtain. On the other side was yet another cargo bay, though this one contained not men, but boxes and crates of supplies. Blaymore released his intangibility spell and quickly searched the hold... taking perhaps two full seconds to find a length of rope, some sturdy knives, and a small hammer. There were steps leading up to the rear deck of the ship. Blaymore put his foot on the first step... and in the blink of an eye he was standing at the top.

A young sailor was napping by the door. He opened his eyes, awakened not

by Blaymore's arrival, but by the sudden charge of the freed slaves up the

front stairwell.... and the scream of the first mate as something very

unpleasant happened to him.

"Wha-" The sailor jumped to his feet and drew his sword. He was exceptionally quick, with fast reflexes that may have marked him as a professional swordsman.

But to Blaymore, the man was a clumsy, drunken slug. Blaymore calmly reached out and snatched the sword from the man's hand. Then he impaled him with it. Before the sailor even knew the weapon was gone, it was exploding out through his back, making a bloody tent out of his loose-fitting shirt. The man gurgled something... then tumbled down the steps into the secondary cargo hold.

Blaymore looked briefly over the edge of the boat at the water below... then jumped overboard.

---

Blaymore angled himself at a downward along the length of the ship, then he dove. His legs tore through the water, churning up a brief but incredible turbulence as he kicked. An instant later, he was too deep for the turbulence to be visible on the surface. Moving that fast through water took painful effort, but he had no more time to waste. He did not intend to surface again until he'd reached the island, so he had to move quickly before the single lung-full of air ran out. The thrust from his rapidly-moving legs propelled him faster and faster even as the weight from his clothing and weapons pulled him down. He adjusted his angle to maintain a level path, then kept going... using his own memory of the island's placement as a guide. There were no currents strong enough to wash him off course, so as long as he kept going straight-

-FLASH-

The sudden burst of energy was more tangible than it was visible. A fierce crackling sensation washed over him, and the water around him turned to thick, half-frozen molasses.

No... it hadn't. The water was the same, but HE... HE was slowing down! He was still expending just as much effort as he had been before, but his legs were barely moving at all. Or rather, they were moving NORMALLY, and not with the magically-augmented speed of just an instant ago.

He'd tripped some kind of underwater defense ward! It was either a slow-field or a flash of magic-dispelling energy. Hopefully it was the latter, because with all his equipment pulling at him and no super-human speed to propel him, he was sinking fast. A slow-field would last until he sank or swam out of it... costing him precious seconds of air. But if it was just a simple-

Blaymore felt his speed return almost as quickly as it had been taken. He angled himself upward and kicked, quickly regaining his former velocity. He rose toward the surface, then slowed down.

He hadn't PLANNED on stopping until he reached the island, but he'd already made one mistake; he didn't intend to make another. Once his head was above water, Blaymore whispered a detect-magic spell. The normal multi-colored flickering of his eyes became a soft greenish glow.

The water around him was clean. He saw no magic... but he knew better.

He canceled the spell and cast more powerful... and more draining one. The glow of his eyes changed... as did the water. There were faint pockets of magic all around him... smaller and fainter than the stars overhead.

Wards.

He was surrounded by them.

Tiny bundles of magical energy lay not far beneath the surface, creating a grid that stretched in every direction... almost all the way back to the ship he'd just left. Blaymore saw the ward he'd just tripped. Its glow was significantly softer than the others, but it was recharging fast. Several of the others were glowing brighter... and they formed a pattern. Blaymore followed them with his eyes, and their path that exactly matched the one he had taken from the slave ship. He'd already tripped them, but instead of some offensive capability, they just glowed softly... silently alerting someone on the island that he was here.

Someone who had access to magic. Someone who was paranoid enough to put detection wards UNDERWATER.

"Damn," Blaymore cursed himself. He didn't curse his loss of the element of surprise... he didn't need it. He cursed his mad rush for vengeance and what it could have cost him. It could have killed him just now. If any of the wards had been something more deadly...

He knew better than that. He WAS better than that. He was Blaymore... the assassin... the Blue Death.... but he was acting like those slaves he'd just unleashed on the ship. He wasn't thinking... here he was, able to think and act faster than anything known to man or nature... and he wasn't thinking at ALL. And he wasn't acting, either... he was reacting, being driven and controlled by his own anger. He'd let his emotions erase everything he had been taught about the PROPER way to do what he was now doing. About the need to know your enemy... to scope out his defenses before knocking on his door. It never occurred to him that the Ellis clan could have gained magic over the years. Magic was always rare here... for fear that the slaves would somehow gain some portion of it and overthrow their masters.

Obviously that had changed now.

And they knew he was coming.

---

...elsewhere...

Central Dispatch was deep in the heart of the ridge of rock that was the backbone of Isle Ellis. It was the nerve center of the island. Zachorion Nightrider saw a pattern on the etched glass map of the Southwestern perimeter quadrant light up as he heard the quiet yet annoying ring of the perimeter alert chime.

"Sonofa," Zach said under his breath as he saw the pattern streak out from the blip he had been watching. The blip was a boat that should have been captain Herza's. He was expecting that, but no one expected the pattern that streaked out from it. "Sector three perimeter breech. Speeded magical assault detected. Single target. Initiate countermeasure S3A," Zach barked into the talking tube that communicated with the tower that stood on the ridge eighty feet through the stone directly above him.

As he spoke the sergeant also tapped the key that sent messages from the heliographs mounted within the tower. Through the talking tube he could hear the massive tower drum sound off as the order was broadcast. It was so loud it nearly drowned out the ticking of the heliographs' shutters even though the pitches were quite different. He wasn't waiting to see if the order was broadcast, however, He already had his mouth to another tube:

"Countermeasure S3A in progress. Security lockdown - all warded structures. Engage security doors! Wards to full! Barracks armory, distribute second tier speed potions. First tier speed carriers, you should already have the brew in your belly!" Zach grimaced. He knew some of the guys designated to drink the speed potions. They were older than he was, mostly, and after tonight's speed they would be considerably older or even retired to the grave if something went wrong.

---

Blaymore weighed his options. He could retreat, learn more, and then come back. It would not take long... but it would take long enough for Ellis.. or whoever his mage was... to make more preparations, or CHANGE the ones they had already made. Any one of the detection wards could have scried Blaymore for his capabilities, giving Ellis an idea of just who or what was coming for him.

No. No, Blaymore would not give him the time to make use of that information. Blaymore had infiltrated magical defenses many, many times before. He already carried with him all the knowledge and skill he needed to do it again.

But Ellis had NEVER faced anything like HIM.

And thus, the advantage still lay with the assassin.

Now, it was time to ACT on that advantage.

Blaymore dove.

He aimed himself straight down and kicked hard... fast... and deep. He had no idea of the effect-radius of the wards, but, by their very nature, they had to have one. All he had to do was exceed it. The wards formed a grid near the surface, so he used their spacing as a guide. Any mage worth his own paranoia would space them so that they overlapped... but just BARELY... so as not to waste precious magic. The fact that they were all set at the same depth just made it easier. Blaymore dove to just over twice the distance that the wards were from each other, then turned toward the island and kicked as fast as he could without ripping the skin and clothing from his legs. He was deep enough so that there would be no more indications of his progress.

The dark wall of island grew larger and closer toward him. He slowed down and made for surface. If he wanted, he could generate enough thrust to propel him several feet out of the water and get a head-start on scaling the wall. But that would be suicide. If the water was monitored and protected, the cliffs most certainly were.

Blaymore surfaced quietly, allowing his own upward momentum to carry him the last few yards. He was almost out of air when he broke the surface, but he spent his first breath mumbling an invisibility spell rather than filling his aching lungs. The spell flew rapidly from his lips, becoming a brief, high-speed chirp in the darkness. Blaymore faded from view, leaving only a bizarre indentation in the water.

There was a second chirp as Blaymore renewed his detect-magic spell, and then added a night-vision spell. He hated using so much magic, especially when he was already fatigued from his run. He was no mage, and magic drained him more than it would someone truly adept in its use... but in this case, it was absolutely necessary.

Blaymore turned his masked face skyward, allowing his eyes to run across the sheer cliff directly before him. There were tiny dots of light scattered all along its surface.

Scattered?

No. Arranged.

More wards.

They appeared as tiny specks of light set into the stone... smaller than sparks... almost smaller than dust. If it weren't for the impressive number of them, and the fact that Blaymore had been expecting them, he wouldn't have noticed the wards at all, even with the detection spell.

There was no way to tell what the wards did. Some were obviously intended to detect intruders, but there were likely a few surprises mixed in... like the null-magic ward he'd set off in the water. Blaymore wasn't going to take any chances with anything else. He had to get around them somehow.

Blaymore analyzed the grid-like pattern for several seconds... equivalent to several hours of intense study. He found nothing. There was no way... no path he could take... that would bypass them all. He did work out several circuitous route that would minimize his exposure, but each path involved snaking back and forth, up and down the cliff like a drunken monkey. It would have to do. He would deal with those few wards he encountered when he came to them.

Blaymore found finger-holds in the jagged cracks of the cliff and hauled himself out of the water. He climbed quickly... for almost a yard. Then he had to perform the rather difficult task of climbing diagonally past one of the wards. He slowed down to almost four times normal speed... hardly a crawl for Blaymore... and continued without pausing. He went up... over... back down...under... and around the wards as quickly as he dared. When he came to a place where there were no handholds to facilitate his progress, he created them.

He jammed one of his knives into whatever shallow crevice or indentation he could find, then he reached for his hammer. There was no need to hold the knife in place while he reached... by the time the knife began to fall, he was already hammering it into place.

He used light, gentle taps.

Four hundred thirty-seven of them.

In a second.

His first attempt actually shattered the rock, gaining him a jagged hand-hold, but not in the way he had intended. He used it anyway and continued in the direction he was headed. He made his way upward, sometimes driving the sturdy daggers into the rock and using them as handholds... and sometimes simply chipping away at the stone to create cracks for his fingers.

When he reached for first ward, Blaymore stopped and studied it. There wasn't much to study. He could tell that there was something there... some *physical* object driven into the stone, but he couldn't see what it was. He was still several yards away from it, and wasn't planning on getting any closer until it was neutralized or destroyed.

Or at least until he tested it.

Since the element of surprise wasn't a factor any longer, Blaymore used his hammer to chip off a few pieces of rock. He threw one of the larger chunks directly at the ward-

-FAZZZZZzz-

A bolt of light leapt from the magical node and blasted the rock away from the cliff. The tiny stone left a thin trail of smoke behind it as it fell.

Blaymore wasn't sure, but that blast looked much more painful than a null-magic zone.

It also left the ward that created it dimmer than it had been before. Dimmer, yet slowly brightening.

Recharging.

That would be the key.

Blaymore studied the cliff-face, picking out his handholds... or lack thereof... in advance. Then he sprang forward, climbing furiously past the temporarily-dormant trap before it could re-arm itself. He didn't know what his margin for error was, but he knew he wasn't going to hang off the side of a mountain and count the seconds to be sure. The next ward he encountered had no visible effect when he tested it. It must have been detection-only, so Blaymore climbed past it with modest confidence.

The third was at the very edge of the cliff, and it threw up a dome of energy that engulfed the small stone Blaymore had thrown at it. But it seemed to have no effect other effect. The field didn't seem to damage or affect the stone at all.

Probably because the stone wasn't magic.

Another null-magic flash.

Fortunately he had set it off with the rock and not himself.

Blaymore waited until the flash dissipated... it took less than a second. Then he hauled himself over the lip of the cliff and sprinted for the nearest tree. He was still invisible, but that didn't mean a whole lot to mages. In fact, now that he was on flat ground, he could dismiss the spell.

...But first he had to catch his breath. He was using too much magic, especially after just having run cross country and climbed a 300-foot cliff. He paused for a second... two... three....

...four...

...and then he was gone.

He zigzagged through the orchard, keeping his eyes moving at all times... darting from the mountain range at the center of the island and the landscape immediately around him. His detect-magic spell picked up several small emanations, but they were even fainter than the wards he'd already encountered... and THOSE had been almost undetectable. Something was not quite right here. It was best to just avoid them entirely-

POP!

There was nothing in front of him. There HAD there; Of that, Blaymore had been absolutely certain. There had been. No trees. No rocks. No wards. And CERTAINLY no cloud of metal shrapnel exploding

out of thin air directly in front of him.

If he had been a moving a little bit faster... or thinking a little bit slower... it would have been the end of him.

Blaymore noticed the faint glow of the metal and realized that the glow was not from the magic that created it, but from the metal ITSELF. The shrapnel was enchanted, which meant he couldn't phase through it.

It took him slightly longer than an instant to realize that... almost too long. Blaymore veered to the left and winced as several of the metal shavings... each no larger than his fingernail... clipped him in the shoulder. Each piece was razor sharp, and Blaymore's own speed drove them right through his cloak... through the lightweight leather armor he wore beneath it... and into the skin of his right shoulder and biceps.

Blaymore skidded to a painful halt and dropped to a crouch. He was bleeding. Badly. The armor slowed the shrapnel enough to keep it from going straight to... and THROUGH...the bone, but it still hurt. If he'd hit the cloud of metal head-on, he would have been cut to ribbons. Blaymore undid enough of his armor to pluck the metal out of his skin, then bandaged his shredded shoulder as best he could. That took two seconds.

Then looked back at what had almost killed him. The bits of metal had all fallen to the ground now, but there was still no sign of the ward that had thrown them up. Even his most powerful detection spell had missed it.

He had to know more about this. Not only was the trap invisible, but it was tailored specifically for something moving at a high speed. Anyone running a normal speed would have been surprised, but not much else. This trap was for speedsters. For HIM.

He crept back a few yards, checking in all directions. There was nothing in the branches above. And below...

Below.

The ward was UNDER the ground... just as the water-wards had been UNDER the water. He could see through water, but not soil. And unlike the cliff-wards, this particular trap was deep enough so that its faint magical aura didn't penetrate the rock to give it away.

The gauntlet just got more challenging.

Blaymore grabbed several apples from a few low-lying branches, and then sped away. He'd only taken a few steps before, without stopping, he threw one of the apples. He didn't have to throw it hard... just a gentle toss as he cut his own speed by half. The fruit flew ahead of him-

POP!

-triggering another speed trap a few yards away. The speeding apple hit the cloud of shrapnel... and emerged on the other side as applesauce and flying bits of pulp. Blaymore sped up again veered around the trap, moving past it before the bits of metal had even hit the ground.

Using the apples, he tested his path every few yards. He only found a few more traps, but then, it would have only taken ONE to shred him to a chunky red paste.

The testing slowed his progress considerably, however, and by the time he emerged from the orchard, there were several armed horseman thundering toward him down the path leading from the mountain range.

Blaymore ran past them as if they were motionless stone statues.

Ellis' guards, however well-armed and armored they were... were not going to be an issue.

He was a half-second away before he realized something... before his mind processed what he had just seen.

The guards were slaves. Both of them.

Slaves? With WEAPONS!?

Surely Ellis was not so insane as to have his own slaves guarding him?!

With this discovery, the long list of things that were just not right here finally reached a critical length.

Blaymore stopped in the middle of the path and chirped an invisibility spell as he turned around.

He had to know more about this place before he went any further into what was likely the largest and most elaborate trap he'd ever walked into.

---

Zach's fingers flew as he tapped in the coordinates of the intruder. They changed so fast because of the intruder's speed that Zach was constantly tapping new ones into the heliograph. The drummer in the tower above was catching them on a reflector as they were sent out. He could not send at Zach's speed, but he got about one out of five updates sent out island wide. Zach Smiled as he looked over at his partner, Moonlight Warden. "Moon, we are lucky sons tonight. You know how rare these speed drills are. If we pull this one off clean, I am looking at a silver collar for sure."

Suddenly Zack sat up straight as the voice of the master came through one of the talking tubes.

"What's this lockdown about?"

Zach blinked, "Speeded magical assault breached sector 3, Master Ellis. I saw a boat on the monitor, but we were expecting one. Then something streaked out. I had an initial contact underwater and I've just been seeing it snake up the cliffs like a lightning bolt. It's heading inland now. Countermeasure S3A is already pending, Master."

"Good," Ellis' voice stated calmly. "Weren't we expecting captain Hezra's boat this evening?" Master Ellis asked.

"Yes Master, we should have seen Herza's boat during this hour, and that's what I thought I was seeing, but now the boat that showed on the monitors just before the breech has started moving north. They must have turned away from the isle."

"It could be the intruder used that stupid freebooter's boat to get close to the island. Dispatch a patrol boat to intercept it. Thankfully our patrol boats are faster than that piece of seaweed. You would think Herza would have got a bigger ship by now since I never pay full price for cargo he damages by cramming it into that excuse for a cargo hold of his. Ah, but wait, it makes perfect sense," Ellis said sarcastically. "I pay him in gold only as a formality. It would be much more efficient if he simply took payment in whiskey from one of my distilleries, since that's where all of his money winds up. If he didn't have contacts with every two-bit slaver in the country, I would be a fool to deal with the idiot."

"Yes master. Multiple flake bursts detected, Master."

"Multiple even though we detected only a single intruder? That is not good. He must be using projectiles to trigger the bursts. We discovered that those old triggers were too sensitive. Let us hope he walks into a grid trap with one of the triggers from guild mage Sanders. Projectiles, even living vegetable matter will not trip them, has to be a roughly man-sized living creature. One of the old seismic triggers might catch him off guard too. Needless to say, Officer Nightrider, this is not a drill, so look sharp."

"Yes Master!"

---

Pat Rover nudged his foot against the side of his galloping horse yet again to adjust his heading. He squinted against the wind but not the lack of light. The alchemist's eye-drops he had put in at the beginning of his shift gave him magic vision. Two wolfhounds ran beside Guard Rover's impressive horse, their tongues hanging out with the exertion of keeping up. Pat's partner, Leer Ward, rode an identical horse beside him. The central drum had been giving one update after another for maybe thirty seconds now, but the coordinates were too far apart. Pat scowled. He did not know why the master even bothered having the regular guards respond to a speeded attack when they were hardly going to be able to see an intruder moving so fast that coordinate updates came out one on top of another. Then again, if a dispel ward got the speeder, it would not hurt to be in the area to make the arrest, and it seemed like Pat Rover was currently on a collision course with the intruder. Rover nudged his horse for a little more speed. If the dogs could not quite keep up, they would still follow.

"Get lucky, Rover, and you'll be stepping up from a bronze collar to a brass, Patrick thought to himself as he blinked the wind-conjured tears from his eyes.

---

Blaymore came up behind the guards and paused. The horses were galloping... the war-hounds were falling slightly behind as they struggled to keep up. But to Blaymore, the world stood almost still, allowing him to approach the speeding riders calmly from behind.

There were two riders, both armed and armored. The armor was a combination of plate and chain mail. It was well-designed... it protected what needed protecting without turning the wearer into a metal statue. The horses and dogs were not without protection as well. The steeds... both black... wore lightweight armor on their exposed flanks. The hounds were different. They had spiked collars and serrated metal bracers on their forelegs, but the rest of their bodies were covered in some kind of strange organic-looking shell. It looked as if their hair had knotted together and hardened into something very ugly, but somewhat useful for protection. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't natural.

The hounds would no doubt detect him shortly. He would see them slooooowly turn and snarl in his general direction. If they were ordinary hounds, they'd be spooked by the thing that they could hear and smell, but not see. If they were GOOD hounds, they would attack, preferably alerting their masters before doing so.

Not that any of that mattered.

Blaymore moved in closer to examine the items the guards were carrying. They each had a longsword and a small leather pouch hanging from their belts. Each also had also a horn... presumably to sound alarms... and a strange metal collar around their necks. Blaymore's magic-detection spell was still in place, and he could see the a faint glow emanating from the collars, and an even fainter one from the contents of the pouch. He could also feel his eyes beginning to blur and itch... some of the strong spell's side effects.

"Hmmm..."

He'd been examining them for almost a second... walking slowly alongside The galloping steeds... when the hounds caught wind of him. Blaymore stopped... deciding to see what developed. If these men hadn't been slaves, he would have killed them. But instead, he was going to see what he could learn from them...

---

The hounds turned sniffing and snarling as they attempted to bite the phantom next to them.

The dogs started snarling, and Pat knew something was up. "Wheel and circle!" Pat yelled knocking an arrow from one of his quivers and drawing it as Leer sounded his horn. The dogs were barking at some mist that was moving as they moved. He doubted he could have seen it without the alchemist's eye-drops but it was there, at least it seemed like it was.

---

They could see him.

Blaymore read it in their reactions. Somehow they could see him. No... not somehow. More magic.

Blaymore canceled his invisibility spell and appeared before the men as he was... a blue-cloaked wraith standing in the path behind them. He slowed his perceptions so that he could communicate with them.

"Who works the magic here," he demanded in his most ominous voice... almost a growl. "And where are the traps."

"Sir, you are trespassing on the Isle Ellis Orchard, Slave Production Facility and Gladiatorial Training Camp. This private island houses armed slaves and is off limits to citizens for their own protection. You will be caught and detained for questioning. If you resist arrest you could be wounded or killed. Do you understand, Sir?" Patrick barked. He might have been terrified, but that did not really matter. He had received more training and drill than the enlisted officers of most royal militaries, yet he wore only the bronze collar of a guardsman.

Blaymore had to try hard to keep from laughing. Nothing the slave said was particularly amusing... not even the part about being wounded or killed if he resisted. But the fact that he had said so much and had taken so long to say it meant that this was a trap. A trap so obvious that it was almost funny. Blaymore was supposed to stand here and try to drag information out of these slaves while the REAL guards finished their preparations for attack. It was a trap that Blaymore had fallen for before... but only once.

Still... there probably WAS something to be gained here.

With hardly a wince from the guard's perspective, Blaymore relieved both men of all their weapons and items. Blaymore had his own sword, so he threw theirs into the woods... at speeds certain to set off more traps. Both guards had an assortment of flasks containing foul-smelling liquids.

Potions. Likely the work of Jallan himself.

An angry chill went down Blaymore's spine.

Blaymore pocketed the flasks, then knocked the slaves unconscious with a light, but quick, thump to the back of the head. Blaymore didn't like the looks of the hounds, but they were no threat to him so he let them be. Neither the hounds nor the slaves were his concern here. By the time the unconscious guards hit the ground, Blaymore was already some distance away.

The path went up a slight incline that briefly blocked Blaymore's view of what lay between him and the mountains. Blaymore paused at the top, and looked down at the town. It was barely big enough to be called a town at all... just rows of buildings with ruddy-brown glazed tile roofs arranged in a matrix of about eight blocks surrounding a huge amphitheater. The architecture of the buildings was not elaborate but some of them were large and all were well-maintained. Some appeared to be residence halls and businesses while many others were obviously houses with yards.

Beyond the buildings of the town, sunken into the ground was the bowl of the enormous amphitheater. The arena was well lit by mage-light and even at the current hour, the ring of steel could be faintly heard above the more pervasive vibrations of a continuously ringing chime that blanketed the town with a pervasive sonic drone. Just beyond the arena was the face of the mountain, into which had been cut the stone facades of more elaborate buildings: the entrances to subterranean structures. This is where Ellis would be. This is where Jallan and... and Grady...

Blaymore's muscles clenched involuntarily...

No... not yet. Vengeance would come, but he had to REACH them first. The town was the only thing between him and the caves, but that did not mean his approach would be easy.

The vast majority of the buildings were residential, but there were some, the ones closest to the road, that looked like shops. None of the structures were crude or rudimentary. Enough effort had been spent on them to make him doubt the first thing that he noticed about the small village. It was a slave town.

It was still early and the slaves were just awakening; preparing themselves for their daily toils. Only a few of them had ventured outside, but around the necks of those few, Blaymore could see the gleam of metal collars similar to he ones that the guards had worn. Some were dressed in lab smocks, business suits, or armor. Their collars varied in color. Blaymore could pick out collars of copper, bronze, brass and silver. The slaves were running either to the face of the mountain or back to whatever building they had left. It was obvious that their morning routines had been very recently disrupted by the droning of the alarm.

The second thing Blaymore noticed about the town were the wards. The faint glimmerings of magic, visible only to his tired, burning eyes, dotted the street in a patternless scattering. And he knew that, for every one that he could see, there were at least twice as many that he could not. Not all of them would be speed-traps, but there would be more than enough of those to make a straight run through the 'town' a suicidal move.

Blaymore proceeded much as he had before. He backed up to give himself room, then got a running start toward the town. There were no more apples to trip the wards, so he used his daggers instead. He slowed down as six balanced throwing-knives left his hands, flying at a significant fraction of his former speed. They zoomed down the center of the street, tripping several wards in rapid succession. Blaymore followed an instant behind them, veering to avoid the shrapnel, lightning, and null-magic zones that the wards threw up. His presence activated a few more that the blades hadn't triggered... most were detection spells, but some were nastier. They weren't built for speeders, however, and Blaymore was fast enough to and run past those without concern. Blaymore's original guess had been wrong... the vast MAJORITY of the traps, fully three-fourths of them, were buried to deep for even his best spell to detect. And the sheer number of them was enough to heighten Blaymore's concern. The increased density of magic meant he was getting close to something valuable. But it also meant that there was more magic here... MUCH more... than he'd prepared for. It would take an army of mages to create such a defensive grid, and it would either take a similar army... or one very powerful mage... to sustain them all for any length of time...

Unless they were all placed here just for HIM.

And that was an increasingly disturbing, and likely, possibility with every speed-trap that Blaymore set off. Blaymore remembered the circumstances under which he'd LEFT Atlanna. His speed had just developed, and he'd used it to escape the Ellis plantation in a frenzied run that had come very close to killing him. But in addition to his sisters, he had left Jallan, Grady, and the Ellis family behind.... and he'd left them with a rudimentary knowledge of his capabilities. They knew about his speed. They had been in the process of 'studying' him when he'd escaped.

That had been over 15 years ago. Blaymore hadn't given much thought to what Ellis and the others had done in the intervening years... but what if they'd spent every day... every second... every resource... preparing for his return? Preparing to capture him... or to defend themselves against the boy that had frightened them so much that they had to torture his family just to try and control him.

Or even worse...

...what if Jallan had somehow DUPLICATED the lost process that had given Blaymore his speed!?!!

What if these traps weren't just for HIM!?

That thought... that sudden realization... was what saved Blaymore's life in the next instant.

The shock of it hit the speeding assassin like a fist in the gut, and he slowed down.

What If-

The thought remained unfinished.

There was a flash of magic in front of him... a hidden ward where there shouldn't have been one. His dagger had failed to set it off, and he'd run right into it! Blaymore quickly turned, putting his back to whatever it was. His cloak billowed around him, accompanied by the sound of something zinging through the air.

Then something bit him. At least that is how it felt at first.

Something small hit him in the back, biting right through his armor and

leaving a long, thin line of pain from one shoulder to the other. It felt like he'd been lashed by a whip, but the pain did not subside... it bit deeper. Blaymore barely felt the pain from the first... whatever... when both arms, both legs, and several places along his back exploded in bloody pain. When he tried to move, not only did the pain get worse... but he found that he was entangled in some kind of net. Thin hair-like filaments had exploded out of the ward and snared him in a net. And the fact that it was a speed-trap meant that, had he been going any faster, he would have run right THROUGH the net... emerging as several dozen bloody chunks. Most of the net was embedded in his cloak and underlying armor. A few strands had penetrated all the way through to his flesh. They hurt. And they sliced deeper and deeper with every move he tried to make. He couldn't move without slicing himself to ribbons. Instinctively, Blaymore whistled his phasing spell... and realized before it was done that the metal filaments were magic. He couldn't phase through them.

He was caught.

---

Able Swiftarrow had been on duty patrolling the town when the alarm had gone off. The second he had heard the drum sound code S3A, Able's hand had flown to his belt. His fingers had been spaced correctly by previous drill to instantly touch the proper studs to pop the top off the locked metal canister that held his speed potion. Without hesitation he tilted the canister and guzzled its contents down. He tossed the canister and his bow to his partner and pulled the atlatl from his quiver. The arrow throwing stick would be much more efficient than the bow he had discarded as soon as the speed potion took effect. By the time he had drawn an arrow to accompany the stick, he could feel his pulse quickening, and the beat of the big talking drum seemed to be rapidly slowing as his perception of time changed. The slowing coordinate updates told him one thing: The intruder was headed towards town.

When the wards had started popping Able had trotted into action following the intruder towards the face of the mountain. He did not want to engage until fully speeded, but with any luck, the intruder would hit a few of the traps, and that would do the worst of Able's work for him. The man triggered plenty of wards and traps, but most were not designed for someone traveling at hyper-speed. The intruder slipped them easily. That did not surprise Able. The guardsman smiled as the intruder ran into a filament speed trap. That would surely give him pause. As he got closer he could see a man in the trap, and as soon as he could see, he let fly. The arrow didn't need to hit the intruder; actually Able was aiming at a spot on the ground right next to him. The magical glyph on the arrow would be triggered on impact and a five foot radius paralysis spell would be

activated.

---

It took Blaymore almost a second to carefully examine the web and pick out the threads that, if cut, would gain him the quickest freedom. It took another second to systematically flex and release all of his muscles, taking stock of what was moveable and what was not. Most were not. His legs were lost in a painful tangle of wire, and his arms were pinned against his sides. Attempting to move them only drew more pain and blood. But he could move his hands... one of them, anyway. That was all he needed. Blaymore's left wrist twitched. One of the metal strands sliced painfully into his forearm, and the knife hidden up his sleeve dropped into his glove. A few painful micro-motions later, the blade was pressed against one of the strands. Blaymore's fingers moved like a hummingbird's wings, cutting rapidly at the metal fiber until-

-tink-

It snapped.

A band of sharp, biting pain fell away, allowing Blaymore a few more inches of movement. He used it to bring the knife's edge to the next piece of netting. He began to saw away at it, and that's when he saw the movement.

Even though his body wasn't moving, Blaymore's perceptions were still hasted. To him, everything around him was nearly stationary... everything except the guard trotting down the street through town. The man was moving at almost normal speed. But normal speed to Blaymore's senses meant...

...meant something bad.

-tink-

The web loosened. The blade was dull and slightly warm from the high-speed abrasion, but Blaymore now had more leverage...

-tink-

-tink-

Blaymore's left arm came free as the guard veered toward him. The man notched an arrow as-

-tink-

-tink-

-tink-

Blaymore freed his other arm. Discarded the dull blade and drew two more, one for each hand-

-tink-

-tink-

-tink-

-tink-

The guard released his arrow just as Blaymore's left leg slipped free. Blaymore could see the projectile coming toward him, but it wasn't so fast that Blaymore couldn't project its course.

-tink-

The arrow was going to miss by several feet... but with this much magic around, several feet could be fatal.

-tink-

-tink-

FREE!

Blaymore rolled hard to the right. There was a flash as the arrow hit six feet away. Whatever magic was involved, Blaymore was out of range. The assassin rolled to his feet, flinging both knives as he rose, then reaching inside his tattered cloak the instant the blades left his fingertips.

---

Guardsman Swiftarrow saw the intruder escaping as he let his arrow fly. This bogey was quick and sharp, and throwing something his way. Ordinarily Swiftarrow might have been tempted to believe a thrown weapon could not travel sufficient distance, but he already knew his opponent was sharp. If the man had no chance of hitting, he would not have wasted the motion. Swiftarrow dodged hard left and brought up his forearm bracer. Tzang! One dagger flew through where he had been standing, the other he just barely deflected with his bracer. "Shit!" Swiftarrow thought, "If both of us were moving at normal speed I should have been able to catch that blade and toss it back. "This guy's fast. Potion's not quite up to full yet, but damn close, Swiftarrow thought as he brought out another arrow and knocked it against the foot of his throwing stick while hopping behind the partial cover of the corner of a building. He let fly, this time aiming for the center of the target. He was no hotdog, he would try to pin the guy with missile fire until some backup arrived.

---

The daggers missed their marks, but they still did exactly what they were intended to do: Distract. In the instant it took for the guard deflect the blades, Blaymore had drawn a tiny glass vial from his cloak and thrown it at the ground. The vial shattered, releasing a cloud of thick blue smoke that would... in a second...obscure everything around him. To the normal slaves, the cloud's rise would have been instantaneous, but to Blaymore it rose up like a gentle fog while the hasted guard leapt for cover.

The remains of Blaymore's cloak billowed around him, stirring the smoke and concealing his motions as he spun to seek cover of his own... or at least that's what it looked like he was doing. His eyes darted across the surroundings. He spotted several easily assessable hiding places in the first glance. Then the guard's arrow whistled past the assassin's shoulder just as the cloud swallowed him... and just as Blaymore whistled an illusion spell. The cloud continued to expand toward the guard, and when the last syllable left Blaymore's lips, eight different images of himself exploded out of the blue fog. Some sprinted boldly in random directions, while others used the blue cloud as cover while leaping for the safety of buildings or open doors. One of them, with sword drawn and eyes gleaming, was headed right for the guard...

...and concealed within that final illusion, running in perfect synchronicity with it, was the REAL Blaymore.

---

Swiftarrow had to marvel at this one. Whoever master Ellis had doing this drill for them was an ace, not just smoke, but smoke and high-speed illusions. Darkness, smoke, fog, illusions none them were much of a problem as long as an officer used Alchemist Jallan's eye drops. The trouble was he had an arrow knocked and all he saw to shoot at was illusions, and they did not show up very well to his sight. Where had the real guy gone? He had to be behind cover, or behind an illusion. Would Swiftarrow have to study every one of the damn illusions for substantiality?

In the end it was not logic but training that came to Swiftarrow's aid. His right arm snapped forward sending a shaft right at the illusion coming his way while he drew a gladius with his left hand. The damn "illusion" had set off a flame-burst ward. Never mind if the illusion was moving too fast for the magic land mine to have a chance of damaging its mark. Every officer knew the Ellis wards did not spring for fakes. Swift knew there would be no time to knock another shaft, so the atlatl got shoved back in the quiver to be replaced by the rapier hanging on his back next to it. It was time for a little up close and personal.

Blaymore and the illusion parted ways the instant the guard's hand moved. The missile split the path between them, and Blaymore's scimitar came around in a fierce upward arc. The guard had drawn his weapon, and, judging from the stance and the grip, he appeared to know how to use it. Now it was time to see just how well these slave-guards fought... and how far they were willing to go to protect their enslaver.

The scimitar whistled as it cut the air. The guard jerked backward, choosing not to block the high-speed blow. Smart. Blocking would have been easier... faster... and fatal. At this velocity and angle, the impact of the weapons would have snapped the guard's wrist. The guard returned with a series of feints, each delivered at a speed almost a match for Blaymore's own. Blaymore dodged... moving continuously as he studied the man's form. He was good. A trained professional... so much so that it was exceedingly hard to tell the feints from the real attacks. Even with the subtle difference in speed, Blaymore was hard-pressed to keep the guard's weapon from his flesh. But he did... dodging when he could, and parrying when he couldn't. Blaymore was careful to keep his blocks fluid and flexible... yielding as much as possible to the opposing force. At this speed, to do otherwise meant cracked weapons and broken bones. The guard apparently knew this as well. His rapier moved in careful, measured strokes... as did the assassin's scimitar. Yet when the weapons kissed, sparks still flew from their joining.

Blaymore intentionally remained on the defensive so that he could watch... study... There was more at stake here than this one guard. He had to know what to expect from the others when he encountered them. Was he fighting the best of them now... or the worst? It was difficult to say.... but one thing was for certain: someone had trained this man well in the intricacies of high-speed combat. Even after several rounds of attacks, the guard hadn't made a single one of the common mistakes that someone new to speed would have made.... that Blaymore himself made when HE first learned to maneuver in the blinking of an eye. But how could this be? Was Blaymore's earlier fear correct... was the guard born hasted as a result of Jallan's magic? Or was this merely a temporary potion? The horsemen he encountered were both carrying potions... perhaps this effect was from one of them.

But time was running out. The longer he fought, the more precious instants ticked by. Those instants weren't so precious before... but now facing unknown numbers of hasted opponents, time had become his enemy.

Blaymore took one step back and then twisted suddenly, grabbing the edge of his cloak and sweeping it around before him, temporarily shielding himself from the guard's sight. The guard jumped back and dodged left... Blaymore's dagger flew past his right ear. He leapt... his feet left the ground just in time to allow Blaymore's scimitar to pass harmlessly under his boots. The guard kicked in the air. Blaymore moved to block, but then quickly ducked aside instead... a high-speed collision between his hand and the guard's metal leg-armor would have ended the fight rather quickly, and not in Blaymore's favor. The guard landed in a perfect fighting stance. Blaymore paused...

The guard attacked. The deadly tip of the rapier came for Blaymore's face. The assassin's blade shot out... too fast, and at the wrong angle... and parried the lunge. The razor-sharp edge of Blaymore's scimitar scraped down the shaft the his opponent's weapon-

-sending a blazing shower of sparks flying right into the guard's face. At the same time, Blaymore thrust his foot behind the guard's heel and tripped him. It was a simple move. The guard could have easily avoided it if it weren't for the red-hot metal shavings burning into his skin.

The guard fell. But, since he was falling under the force of gravity and not due to his own hasted motion, the impact with the ground would not be fatal. Good. Blaymore did not come here to kill slaves.

But he didn't come here to be killed BY them, either.

The instant the guard started to fall, Blaymore swung his scimitar in a gentle blow that rang out against the metal of the guard's helm. If the man's speed was due to a potion, he would be normal speed when he regained consciousness. But, in case it wasn't, Blaymore snatched up the guard's rapier and shattered the other weapons before moving on.

The entire incident had taken only a few seconds, but each one of them was invaluable. Still, Blaymore had SOME idea of what he was facing. The guards were trained professionals... although still slaves... and at least some of them had access to hasting magic. The source and duration of that magic was still a mystery, however.

Blaymore zigzagged through the remainder of the town at an even slower rate than before. The net-trap had almost taken him, but when he set off the NEXT two, he had enough time... barely... to avoid the deadly strands before they entangled him again.

The mountain face rushed up to meet him, and he saw several entrances that lead into some kind of underground complex. Mines? No... the entrances were too regal and ornate to be mine shafts. Perhaps it was some kind of underground city. Whatever it was, its entrances and passageways were likely to be better protected than anything he'd encountered so far. The main entrance yawned before him like a gigantic stone mouth... out of which several teams of non-hasted guards were already emerging. They were like statues to Blaymore, but they were heavily armed. And behind them, the glow of magic flickered ominously in the dark interior of the mountain.

Blaymore headed right for them. His own magic detected nothing... almost nothing... on the short strip of roadway between him and the entrance. Any wards that were present were either concealed with unusual care or were buried very deep in the ground. Or both. Blaymore decided to risk it. He sped up, eyes scowling at the nearly-motionless guards. His own scimitar was once again concealed beneath his cloak, but he still had the guard's rapier clutched in one hand.

Blaymore let the weapon fly... flinging it like a javelin as he suddenly veered away from the guards. The rapier flew like an arrow, whistling past the guards and vanishing into the cave entrance.

Blaymore paused long enough to see the sudden, violent flare of magic erupting within the mountain as the speeding rapier set off one... or possibly several of the speed-traps just past the entrance. Had Blaymore not already been suspicious of this island and its magic, he would have ran after the rapier, following a mere eye-blink behind it and letting it take the brunt of the traps for him.

But THAT kind of thinking was what had almost gotten him killed in the slave-town. Some of those wards would be set for speeding HUMANS and not just speeding OBJECTS. No matter... before the blaze of magic even reached its crescendo, Blaymore was gone... racing along the perimeter of the mountain at a subdued blur. Some of the guards... possibly the hasted ones... would be responding to the rapier. NOW was the time to find another way in.

He spotted several other entrances to the mountain.... all of them were locked down and thick with magic. The passages must wind through the interior of the mountain like a labyrinth. Blaymore scanned the rock between the entrances, and saw the telltale glow of magic emanating from the stone. It was enchanted.

The entire mountain?

No. No that couldn't be. If a mage were THAT powerful... he wouldn't need slaves.

What was it, then? Did the stone possess some kind of natural energy? Or-

If Blaymore hadn't been watching so closely, he would have missed it entirely. The faint greenish glow of the stone began to fade. It was an exponential decay... the energy decreased slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly until it finally vanished. An instant later, there was a brilliant flash as some kind of magical wave swept through the stone. When the flash ended, the stone was glowing again. And the glow had already begun to fade. Blaymore didn't know what he was seeing, but he started counting... To unhasted eyes, what he had just seen would have been just a flicker, but to HIM, it was something he could time... and hopefully use...

But he had to concentrate. To Blaymore, time wasn't the same absolute that it was to everyone else. Even for a hasted individual, one second was still the same as the seconds before and after. But Blaymore's mental training allowed him to alter his perceptions at will, allowing his own mental state to determine how fast or slow each second seemed. With practice, it allowed him to time things down to an exacting detail. He watched one full cycle of the strange energy flow while clicking off the instants in his mind-

-even as two guards appeared, one in front and one behind. Both were moving quite quickly and were using the same throwing sticks that the first hasted guard had used. They launched their missiles the instant they saw Blaymore. Their arrows sliced through the air-

FLASH!

The strange wave of magic replenished the glow of the mountain side as Blaymore raced toward the trees. He'd seen the guards and was already moving when they fired. Their missiles whizzed past him, one missing his shoulder by less than an inch. Blaymore changed directions and shot past a group of trees, slowing slightly as soon as he was out of sight-

CRACK!

One of the arrows struck a branch a foot from Blaymore's head. It had hit in front of him... if he'd kept running at the same speed, it would have been skull instead of a tree branch. But Blaymore kept right on moving... emerging from the trees and heading for the mountain.... where the magic was noticeably dimmer than it had been after the flash. Blaymore ran straight for it, aiming for a spot dead-center between two of the smaller entrances... then he veered away again as two arrows crossed each other in front of him. Then he veered back, running faster... then slower. He knew the guards were tracking him, anticipating his speed and aiming their arrows accordingly. But if he altered his speed at random, it would put them off for a few shots...

Of course, they had already TAKEN a few shots. Blaymore saw the next volley of arrows coming for him. Blaymore altered his perceptions juuuuuust enough so that he could see the incredibly fast projectiles... trace their course... then judge his own path in relation to the mountain side.

The instant after he did that, the arrows hit-

-and bounced off of the stone where Blaymore had just vanished.

The mountain closed in around Blaymore like a fog... and he passed through it just as easily. The substance of Blaymore's body was like that of a phantom. He hadn't wanted to risk an intangibility spell with this much magic around... especially with the disturbing presence of null-magic traps on the island. But his options were limited. The hasted guards... well TRAINED hasted guards... had taken a significant chunk out of his advantage. They were almost as fast as he was, and had obviously been trained how to use that speed in combat.

But they didn't have magic.

Unfortunately, magic was a two-edged sword that could get him killed just as easily as it could save his life. As the phantom assassin whistled through the rock, He hoped that whoever had built this complex wasn't paranoid enough to place concealed wards inside the solid stone of the mountain. He hoped that whatever interior wall he encountered wasn't enchanted... else he'd likely end up splattered all over the back of that wall. And he hoped that there WAS a wall... and that he passed through it before the magic pulse caught him. Blaymore didn't know what the magic pulse did, but whatever it was wouldn't be good. And at this speed, it didn't have to do ANYTHING... suddenly NOT being able to pass through the enchanted stone would be fatal in itself. It would be like hitting a wall at full speed.

All of these thoughts raced through Blaymore's mind as he himself raced against the numbered instants ticking in his brain. He was cutting it close. Judging from the placement of the entrances on the exterior, he should be reaching one of the interior passages right about...

Now!

No passage appeared. No hallway opened up around him.

This was not good. He should be free of the rock by now... but he wasn't. And he NEEDED to be free within the next fraction of a second. If the corridors had gone straight in from the entrances, he would have intersected one or both of them by now. But if they turned immediately then they could be anywhere inside the mountain.

Not 'anywhere,' because Blaymore knew exactly where they were NOT. Right here where he had planned on them being.

Several more uncomfortable instants passed as Blaymore counted down the last of them in his mind:

seven... six... five...

At 'zero' the entire mountain would become enchanted and he would die a rather ugly, yet spectacular death. Perhaps not spectacular, since there would be no one around to see it. One thing was for certain, they'd never be able to scrape the mountain clean of his innards and various pieces.

...four...three...

He had to hit something soon-

...two...

Very soon.

...one...

It wasn't fear of dying, but thoughts of Ellis that came to Blaymore's mind in the last instant. Ellis and the others were going to go on enslaving these people forever... and with Blaymore decorating the interior of this mountain, there would be no one left to stop them... no one to avenge the evil.

THAT made Blaymore angry.

Unfortunately, even if it were possible for that anger to be of some use... it was already too late-

There was a crackle of power that exploded around... no, BEHIND... Blaymore as he shot into the open air. Several sensations washed over Blaymore in rapid succession. First was the sense of speed as he raced toward the opposite wall. Following it was a sudden buzzing sluggishness as a null-magic field sprang up around him. Blaymore's speed and intangibility vanished... but his momentum was still the same, and it was carrying him face-first into the wall before him. With no speed, Blaymore didn't have the reflexes to stop himself before-

And then the third sensation hit... a sudden JERK as something yanked Blaymore backward. The null magic had hit before Blaymore was completely free of the stone. His limbs were free... but the bottom third of his cloak had solidified within the rock, where it remained trapped. The garment nearly choked him as it snapped tight, but it saved him the rather ignoble end of decorating Ellis' wall with his own entrails.

---

In the guardroom at the entrance to the mountain, A high-pitched whine issued from the talking tubes. The normal guards could not hear it, but to the two hasted guards, Ward Sharpewhistle and Proto Bladesinger, the whine was a voice from central. It said, "Intruder near Jallan's". Sergeant Slinger had already input the codes and the wards protecting the door disengaged for just long enough for Sharpe and Proto to open the door and run into the corridor to the East. "Stick near the wall so I can fire, and sing out before you get all the way back here, I may turn the nulls on if he doubles back this way." "Sir, yes sir!" The guards said as they ran to the east down the ceramic-tiled corridor.

The Sergeant quickly engaged the barred door and its wards crackled into place as the Sergeant knocked an arrow and let fly through the door. The arrow rocketed past the two running, speeded guards and disintegrated against the tiled wall on the far end of the corridor where it turned South. "Hotfoot for you, Bogie," the Sergeant grinned as the arrow hit and a web work of ricocheting blue lightning filled the corridor both South and East.

---

The null-field lasted only an instant, more than enough to cancel whatever magic lay within its area of effect. But since his body generated its own magic, Blaymore's speed began to return as soon as the field dissipated...

...just as something whizzed past his face. An arrow. Not aimed at him, but at-

FAZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!

Lightning filled the corridor around him. Blaymore ducked... or as close as he could with his cloak still embedded in the wall... as the sharp fingers of electricity scraped across his clothes, armor, and flesh. The blast was brief... painful...

...and a diversion. Blaymore heard the approach of one or more hasted guards using the sound and fury of the blast for cover. They were coming around the corner. The assassin drew one dagger and threw it at the wall. It hit the decorative tile and ricocheted down the adjoining corridor... along with several tiny chunks of the wall itself.

The instant the blade left his fingers, Blaymore drew his scimitar, sliced off the bottom of his cloak, and prepared to intercept the guards.... or whatever was left of them.

---

When lightning filled the corridor just in front of them, Sharp and Proto did not slow down. The Sergeant was a pro, and the crackling lightning, even at this speed lasted only a split second before it disappeared.

Fzzzt-Kchang!

Suddenly a speeded object hit the wall of the corridor and a spot on the tiled wall burst into a cloud of dust and ceramic chips.

Ah! Sharp grimaced as something flew through the side of his face, removing two teeth and putting a hole right through his cheek. Most of the rest of the chips powdered themselves against his armor, but a few made it through causing several deep wounds in areas where his armor was less protective. Blood welled from several holes in the chain mail over his abdomen; his left arm was bleeding as well. Proto rounded the corner in front of him. Sharpe was glad that Proto's quick duck behind his shield had preserved his partner from any serious wounds. A few flecks of blood were visible through holes punched in Proto's chainmail skirts but unlike Sharp, he didn't seem to be running any slower.

---

Two guards... both slaves. One was armed with a rapier, and the other carried a spiked shield and a small metal rod a few feet long. Both men were injured... the rapier-wielder was bleeding appreciably from the shrapnel that Blaymore had sent their way. The other just had a few dents in his armor.

Blaymore wasn't in much better condition. His clothes and flesh still sizzled from the lightning-blast.

More hasted guards. More magic. This was beginning to get annoying.

The guards spotted Blaymore and immediately attacked. The bleeding guard launched some kind of dart. The assassin saw the motion and... at the instant before the dart flew and the instant AFTER it was too late for the guard to change his aim, Blaymore charged. He didn't have time for a game of 'dodge' with their missiles... he had to take them out quickly before any other guards arrived.

The man with the shield moved to intercept. The dart-thrower backed away and readied another missile... obviously waiting for a clear shot. Blaymore's scimitar whistled as it cut the air. The guard's weapon and shield came up... blocking with the second while striking with the first. The metal rod came straight toward Blaymore's abdomen. Blaymore jerked to the side and grabbed at the guard's wrist, but the guard had anticipated the motion. The rod snapped upward, rotating in the guard's hand as he brought it up in a short arc aimed at Blaymore's jaw.

The assassin's scimitar missed the shield entirely... as it had been intended to. Blaymore spun to his left, narrowly avoiding the guard's weapon while hooking his own arm around the guard's elbow. The guard slung Blaymore around like a doll... the man was stronger than he looked. But Blaymore still had his arm. The armor protected most of the pressure points in the joints, so Blaymore twisted the limb behind the man's back. The guard immediately thrust himself backward, trying to slam Blaymore against the wall. The motion came so fast that it had to be a reflex. Blaymore released the man just in time to keep from being crushed, but in the same motion, his leg shot out in a side-kick aimed at the guard's kidney.

The guard was good. He twisted to avoid the surprise move while striking out at the extended limb... metal rod rotating as it came down. Blaymore turned the failed side-kick into successful spinning-kick. His foot bounced off of the guard's shield just below the two-foot long spike. The impact sent painful shockwaves up Blaymore's leg, but it also knocked the guard back just as the second guard's dart zipped between them. Blaymore twisted and launched a dagger at the man. The guard dodged and prepared another missile, but by the time he had done so, Blaymore was in motion... whispering his detect-magic spell as he charged the first guard again.

The guard raised his shield and thrust it before him, preparing to meet the high-speed charge. But rather than impale himself on the shield's deadly spike, Blaymore used it as a stepping stone. His leapt into the air and flipped over the guard's head, coming down behind him. The guard spun quickly and swung the metal rod. Blaymore's hands shot out and snagged the man's wrist... successfully this time. Instantly, the shield thrust forward-

Blaymore took the spike right through the abdomen.

...and then he was gone.

Blaymore's intangible form slid through the guard, turned, and then impaled the man from behind with the scimitar. Normally, the weapon didn't have a prayer of penetrating the guard's armor... but the blade was as intangible as the hand that wielded it, and the armor was not enchanted.

The guard looked down and saw the end of Blaymore's phantom blade protruding from his chest.

"Flinch and the blade goes solid. Tell your friend to stand down!"

"Sharp! Take Him!" the guard shouted.

Blaymore yanked the blade out of the guard's torso an instant BEFORE he turned solid. He hit the ground as the first guard spun... and the second guard's dart caught his comrade squarely in the chest. There was a flash, and the first guard fell. He landed in an awkward position... arms and legs outstretched as if he were still standing up. Paralysis. Nasty, but not fatal. The next dart would leave HIM just as helpless.

Blaymore had already snatched up the fallen guard's shield. He flung it down the corridor. The guard dodged, but his own injuries slowed him for a decisive fraction of a second-

The shield caught him in the ribcage, denting his chest armor and shattering the ribs behind it. The man would probably live...

...but Blaymore was not as concerned about that as he'd been earlier. Ordinarily he would have killed them both without hesitation, but he gave them the benefit of the doubt. They were slaves. But they were also armed slaves who were willing to die protecting their master. Perhaps they'd been mind-controlled or fallen under some other sinister influence... but THAT would only buy them so much sympathy. Next time, some of them may end up dead. Not *maybe* dead or *eventually* dead... but VERY dead.

And next time was racing down the corridor toward him at this very moment.

More guards... more than two this time. The brief combat had given the entire mountain time to rally and respond to his intrusion.

Very well...

Blaymore took the second guard's paralysis darts. There were four left and he used three of them immediately:

He buried them.

He made them intangible and then placed them in the floor at an angle facing the direction of the guards. Then he made them tangible again, anchoring them half-buried in the tile. Setting the trap took barely an instant of real time, after which Blaymore vanished down the hallway... pausing to take the spiked shield and the metal rod.

The hallway was riddled with wards and magical defenses. He set off another lightning-trap in the first dozen yards, but its area was limited and Blaymore was almost past it before it reached full intensity. He caught a few more painful burns, but he didn't let that slow him down. Ahead of him, the corridor he was on dead-ended into another one....

---

Four newly speeded guards dispatched from the guardroom at the entrance to the mountain rounded the corner to confront the intruder in a loose diamond-shaped formation. The one on the inside did not see the dart spikes sticking out of the floor after he rounded the corner until it was his ill luck to step on one. The effect was instantaneous; the paralysis glyph on the dart went off, the guard's legs stopped moving as his body stiffened. His stiff body began to tumble because some momentum had been ripped from his foot by sticking into the dart, but his top half was still moving at full speed.

Two of his compatriots simply did not step on a dart. The one at the leading point of the diamond was lucky enough that his foot struck the area just beyond the dart rather than landing on top of it. The guard on the outside heard the point man yelp, saw the darts and jumped over them. He tried not to look back. He could hear the staccato symphony of breaking bones as his former compatriot tumbled against the tile floor, his head and limbs breaking off as his body was transformed into an unrecognizable pulp. The guard taking up the rear had the misfortune to slip on the gore. He tumbled at the angle at which he'd turned the corner and flew straight into the wall. The collision was almost explosive as blood and gore flew everywhere. A few drops showered the backs of the front-runners who had sped up to avoid the carnage.

---

Blaymore had no idea which way to go. He picked a direction, scanned it for traps, and then paused to set one of his own. One high-speed strike from the metal rod, several of the floor tiles in the center of the intersection shattered. Blaymore quickly gathered the pieces and replaced them exactly where they were... Then he ran just as guards appeared in the hallway behind him.

He heard the guards behind him, and saw a long, unbroken corridor ahead. That was bad. The instant the guards rounded the corner they would pepper him with missiles, and he had nowhere to take cover. And, if Ellis' guards were as well-trained as they appeared, then there should be another squad of them approaching from the opposite direction. The loose floor tiles should thin the group behind him a bit...but not enough.

---

After loosing half their number, the guards' eyes were sharpened for traps on the floor, and their speed was diminished to round this next corner more safely than before. The point guard discovered the broken floor tiles an instant too late, but he kept his head about him and jumped as he slid towards the wall. The second guard grinned and followed along as the two of them demonstrated a tour de force of acrobatic skill. The men ran up along the wall as though it had been a floor, took a few steps across the ceiling and came down the other wall in a high-speed corkscrew maneuver that brought them back to the ground. The first guard limped badly, having fractured his ankle on the initial slip-jump, but the second was ready for battle.

---

Just then... as the guards reached the trap he'd set behind him, another pair of guards appeared ahead at the far end of the corridor. They had been expecting HIM as much as he had them. One of them launched an arrow the instant they rounded the corner. The arrow was too fast. It wasn't TRAVELING too fast, but it had been launched too quickly... before the archer had time to aim it properly... unless... Blaymore tracked the arrow's course and saw that was going to miss by a yard.

That's when he slowed down, raised his shield, and hoped that it was enough-

The explosion rocked the corridor. It wasn't nearly enough to cause a cave-in, but it was more than enough to send a shockwave... along with a deadly rain of rock and debris... roaring down the hallway. Both sets of guards were far enough away to ensure their safety. Blaymore was right in the middle of it.

The shield shook violently in Blaymore's hands as the force of the blast nearly tore it out of his grasp. Debris battered both him and the shield. Blaymore protected his face and torso while his extremities took a painful pounding from sharp pieces of airborne tile thrown up by the explosion...

...but it only lasted for an instant. Blaymore kept his eyes on the corridor walls, and when the time was right, he veered to the left and vanished... slipping in between the timed magical pulses that protected them. He kept running the same direction, counting the instants, then veered suddenly back into the corridor just behind the second set of guards...

...only he was actually in front of them.

They'd either tracked his progress through the wall somehow, or they'd anticipated his tactic. They'd backed away from their previous position and turned to face him. No matter. He was too close for darts or arrows... especially the exploding variety... and Blaymore had actually started HIS attack before he emerged. Even as he cleared the wall, his scimitar left his hand... flying into the chest of the first guard. The weapon was intangible, and the guard's armor did not stop it... But his time Blaymore made good on what he had only threatened earlier. When the flying blade had only passed halfway through the guard's torso, both Blaymore and the weapon turned fatally solid, just in time to raise his shield and parry the second guard's bladed flail.

---

Brand Bullwark grinned as his powerful muscles kept the saw-bladed ball of his flail spinning at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute. He knew exactly what he could do with his flail while speeded, and he relished it. He had a flail in the other hand as well, but was using the handle, a rod identical to the one the intruder had stolen, as a parrying weapon. Brand watched the intruder grimace and dodge as half his

stout shield was instantly cut away by the humming blade of Brand's fail.

Blaymore could see the vacuous dull glamour of anti-magics on the surface of the burly guard's flails. This man would be dangerous whether Blaymore was tangible or not.

Meanwhile, Rock Stalwart tossed his quivers and bandoleer of darts to Sergeant Warrant who stood on his good ankle and began launching a volley of thrown darts at the intruder's left flank while Rock drew his shiny gladius and a pain-enchanted whip to play tag team across from Brand on the intruder's right flank.

Blaymore's pre-planned tactic for the rest of the fight disintegrated along with his shield. The assassin leapt backward to avoid the speeding flail's backswing... and as he did, he flung the remainder of his shield down the corridor at the approaching guard. The last of Blaymore's balanced throwing daggers followed the shield a split-second later, aimed slightly to the left of the armed slave. In a twirling, acrobatic move, the guard dodged both shield and dagger without missing a step. Meanwhile, the first guard's rapidly rotating flail came around for another slash. Blaymore spun away from the slash... and from the darts launched by the third slave... and snatched his scimitar from the chest of the guard he'd already killed. The man was in the process of falling, but was doing so at normal speed. To Blaymore, he'd barely moved an inch. Blaymore grabbed the scimitar's hilt as he completed his spin... flicking the blade suddenly and sending a spray of blood and gore flying off of the weapon and into the first guard's eyes.

Blaymore lunged, his scimitar aimed at the guard's exposed abdomen. It should have been an easy kill, but even half-blind with his comrade's blood, the guard managed an expert block while counterattacking. The spinning weapon sliced down across Blaymore's shoulder-

-shredding his cloak and the already damaged leather armor beneath. Blood gushed from the fresh wound as pain shot down his arm to his fingertips. An inch deeper and it would have ripped his arm off.

The second attack was right behind it. The blunt end of the guard's parrying weapon came up in an arc toward the assassin's chin. Blaymore moved just enough... and not an inch more... to allow the attack to miss. Blaymore was reaching for the guard's arm when he suddenly had to dodge another missile. He and the guard spun apart, changing positions in the corridor so that all the guards were now in front of the assassin. The slave was on him again instantly... slashing continuously with his bladed flail, keeping Blaymore continuously dodging.... dodging because there simply was no way to parry that incredibly destructive flail. It had already cut through his shield like scissors through paper.

It was a ruse, and Blaymore knew it. The first guard was keeping him busy until the second man arrived. And all the while, the third guard kept launching dart after dart down the hallway in seeming disregard for the other slaves. Either the man didn't care who he hit, or these slaves were immune to whatever effect the darts carried. Whatever the reason, Blaymore didn't want to be hit by one.

He ALSO didn't want to fight two of these guards at once.

Blaymore dropped to a crouching position, with his bloody scimitar in one hand and the other held ready. He charged.

What remained of his cloak flapped behind him... not like a cape, but more like a tattered blue tablecloth hung out in a stiff wind to dry. The guard frowned... and paused for just an instant as he considered the incredibly foolish and suicidal attack.

Should he kill this fool?

Or wait to find out the nature of the trap?

He decided to wait.

He took a step back and turned his parrying weapon toward the charging assassin. The second guard was barely three yards behind him.

Blaymore's eyes scanned the walls... timing the pulses of the magic flowing through them. Would the same trick work twice? Probably-

Blaymore veered toward the wall while whistling his intangibility spell. The first guard lunged toward him, moving to intercept the assassin before he reached the safety of the wall. Spinning in the guard's grasp, the enchanted flail screamed as it sliced the air. Blaymore shifted his attention from timing the magical pulses to timing the rotations of the flail... he increased the speed of his perceptions until the weapon became something slightly less than a blur.

The guard saw this shift in focus, but the notice came too late. Blaymore spun out of the flail's path... his boots left the ground for an instant so that his sudden twist wouldn't snap his ankle. The spin was quick and tight, he immediately came around and caught the guard around the midsection with one arm-

-just as he reached the end of his intangibility spell.

The force of the impact jolted the bones in Blaymore's upper body as both he and the guard hit the wall...

The intangible guard fell INTO the wall, but only made it halfway before Blaymore canceled the spell. Both the assassin and the slave turned solid at the same time... only the guard materialized with his head and torso still caught within the stone. The man died instantly.

His hand... still holding the rotating flail... went limp.

The weapon shot from the guard's nonexistent grasp and roared down the hallway at an incredible speed, narrowly missing the second guard-

-yet still catching the third in the chest. The slave's entire upper torso turned into a fine red spray as the flail passed through it and buried itself DEEP into the rock behind him.

Blaymore instantly ducked. The second guard sailed over him... leg extended in a flying kick that Blaymore had seen coming an instant before. The guard landed in a forward roll that expended some of his momentum. He came up and turned... already snapping the whip with his right hand.

Wha-KASH!

The length of enchanted leather POPPED as it broke the sound barrier. Blaymore lunged out of the way, but the very tip of it caught him on his already injured shoulder...

Blaymore wasn't quite sure, but the sensation was almost... ALMOST... like being skinned alive and rolled repeatedly over a mixture of salt and broken glass, all of which had been liberally doused with boiling hot acid. Almost.

NOW he knew what particular enchantment the whip held.

Blaymore hissed as the pain stabbed into him. The whip had barely touched him... it had done almost no physical damage, yet it filled his mind with distracting agony while the guard struck again-

Wha-KASH!

A direct hit. The whip's momentum threw Blaymore backward several feet, while the enchantment made him feel as if his internal organs were being shredded. His scimitar hit the ground a yard away.

The same training that allowed Blaymore to control his speed also let him push the pain aside... mostly... and roll to a crouching position as the whip came again. Immediately he reached for the metal rod he'd taken from an earlier guard.

He swung the weapon into the whip's path as he rose. The pain-whip wrapped around it, and instantly the guard yanked the metal rod out of Blaymore's hand.

Blaymore let the weapon go; the guard couldn't use the whip on Blaymore if it was wrapped around the rod.

Blaymore snatched up his scimitar and charged. The guard dropped his whip and readied his sword.

The weapons clashed loudly as the men shot past each other... and then again as each spun and slashed at the same time. Neither strike was at full strength, but both would have been fatal had they connected. Blaymore leapt backward as the guard swung his blade at the assassin's midsection... then lunged quickly before Blaymore could get proper footing. Blaymore parried, sending a shower of sparks spraying from the intersection of the blades. The guard kept coming... attack after attack... never letting up even for a moment. Blaymore had no choice but to back away... he could parry the guard's attacks all day long, but his scimitar was a lot less tolerant of such high-speed impacts than the guard's sword.

The guard knew this.

He was a good swordsman... strong, quick, and well versed in the tactics of speeded combat. Blaymore gave ground before him, avoiding as many of the attacks as possible. When the guard slashed at his head, Blaymore ducked...

...the guard's blade stopped an inch short of the wall, where Blaymore had hoped it would shatter or become lodged in the stone. When both failed to occur, Blaymore quickly blocked the guard's hasty kick and, instead of attacking with the scimitar... turned his block into a grab. He grasped the guard's ankle and pulled.

Instead of falling, the guard went into a perfect backflip, landing a few feet away and charging again without even so much as a pause. Blaymore held ground and let him come-

More sparks. Blaymore's weapon slid down the length of the sword, but this guard wasn't going to fall for the shower of sparks to the face like the earlier one had. He turned his head suddenly, and the sparks bounced off of his helmet. Then, suddenly he kicked Blaymore in the side.

Blaymore grunted as he staggered backward. Deep, painful nausea radiated from the point of impact. The high-speed kick had almost been a surprise... he'd barely had time to move, and even then the glancing blow could have ruptured his organs. Luck and the remains of his armor had saved him... yet he still couldn't stop from doubling over in pain.

The guard was on him instantly.

Blaymore spun away and slashed. His blade drew sparks from the guard's chainmail. A harder strike might have penetrated, but it might also have shattered his already-damaged scimitar.

The guard's sword danced before Blaymore as the assassin backed away once more... then suddenly reversed directions and charged. Blaymore's blade whistled as he pushed what little speed-advantage he had, making a series of false attacks that came so quickly that the guard wouldn't have a prayer of detecting the REAL-

CLANG!

He blocked it. HARD.

The strike was meant to shatter Blaymore's sword, but Blaymore kept his arm limp, absorbing some of the force with his arm rather than his blade. At the same time, his foot came up in a low front-kick to the guard's crotch.

The metal toe-piece of Blaymore's boot met the metal of the guard's armor in a high-speed collision. Both armors yielded... but the guard had a lot more at stake than the assassin: Blaymore's cracked toe hurt a great deal less than the guard's pulverized testicles.

The guard's eyes widened in shock and pain as he backed away, instinctively raising his sword to block Blaymore's next strike... but he was a bit too slow to parry the one that followed. The guard's body jerked...

...and then his head toppled from his neck.

Blaymore glanced at the mess he'd created of Ellis' hasted guards. They were good. He was better. MOST of him wished that this was the last of them... but a tiny, tiny spark had enjoyed the challenge. It had indeed been a long time since-

-but he had more important things to do now. Blaymore straightened what remained of his cloak and hobbled down the hallway.

---

The corridor ended at a huge, important-looking metal door. The door was metal, and the hardened steel had a faint glimmer of magic about it. However, the lock that sealed it had no such aura.

Blaymore's set of lockpicks worked at the mechanism with a speed that was both impossibly quick and maddeningly slow. The mechanism was intricate, but not delicate by any means. Picking it took more precious instants... almost a second's worth of them.

Finally the lock clicked. Blaymore yanked the door open and, in the same motion, backed away from it to avoid anything coming his way. When no hidden traps went off, Blaymore slipped into the chamber beyond.

'Chamber' was perhaps not the correct word. The place was far too big to be a room, although there were several doors and room-sized alcoves leading off of it, it was more the central corridor of a complex. Blaymore passed plumbed sinks, heated forges and furnaces, numbered, caged rodents, and a few larger animals, a cell-block holding exotic animals with some alchemical significance, rooms with magical and mechanical microscopes, pressure sterilizers, glassware, herbal and chemical reagents, and more. It was the kind of laboratory most alchemists spent their nights dreaming of. Everything looked new and was spotlessly well maintained. Blaymore grimaced as he saw five carts parked in an alcove next to an operating theatre. Four held the dissected remains of rats, each layer of skin was meticulously pinned aside so that the organ cavity was exposed. On the fifth cart was the body of a slave, treated no differently than the rats had been.

Blaymore went through a large room with tables having grids of bars standing up along their centers to which countless bubbling flasks and retorts were affixed over the pale blue flames of swamp-gas powered burners. Each table was a sharpened lance protruding into the depths of unknown discovery ...and at the rear of the building was an alcove with a simple table. Two figures were seated there, enjoying a meal and a light conversation. They were both old men, although one was significantly older than the other. Their words were frozen in stillness to Blaymore's senses... but the assassin didn't need voices to know who they were.

All he had to do was look.

Their faces cut like sharp steel, and their names welled up in Blaymore's mind like blood gushing from an open wound, dragging behind them the full ugliness of the memories from so long ago...

Cruelty. Torture. Murder.

Cowardice.

He still hurt from those memories... yet he hurt even MORE from the things he DIDN'T remember... from the knowledge of what had come after... of what had been visited onto his sisters. He hadn't protected them then. But now he would protect ALL of them... all of the slaves... all of the victims...

He had found them.

He had reached the prize!!

His pause at the room's entrance had been brief, but it was long enough for the pair of old men to turn toward him. It was too soon for them to show fear, but the look of surprise was just beginning to form on their evil, ugly features.

Jallan the Alchemist.

Grady the Overseer.

Blaymore's blade... battered and bloody from combat... still managed a half-hearted gleam as he drew it, advancing on the pair like a howling wraith. Grady's frozen face loomed largest in his mind-

-Grady the Murderer-

and it grew larger and uglier with every hasted step Blaymore took. And younger. For Blaymore was no longer seeing either of them as they existed now, but as they did back then. Their faces changed right before his eyes, and the huge laboratory closed in... drawing up around him as it transformed into a similar, but much smaller place where Jallan had tortured him... and where Grady-

-Grady the Killer-

had murdered his mother.

Whipped.

He had whipped her to death before Blaymore's very eyes...

...and he was doing it again. Right now. Right here.

It was happening again. Blaymore was six years old, tied to a lab table stained with his own blood... helplessly watching Grady's whip come down on his mother's bloody back.

Again...

Again....

He heard the leather strap cut the air. He heard his mother's cries... silent cries, for she had refused to scream. All she did was flinch and stare at him with the pain beaming out of her eyes. He saw the blood... saw her fall... still looking at him... and saw Grady lashing the twitching body-

...again...

...and again...

Fear and pain wrestled for control of Blaymore's soul, and their battle sapped every bit of strength from his body. He couldn't move. He was still strapped to that table, and he was still beating her... killing her...

over...

...and over...

......again...

And somewhere far in the future, in ANOTHER lab, a much older Grady had stood up while an ancient alchemist shoved his chair back away from the blue apparition that had appeared before them. An apparition that had raced toward them with bloody weapon drawn, but was now standing stark still as an anguished, high-pitched scream tore free from its throat-

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO! MAMMAAAAAAAAA!"

Grady squinted, a blade-wielding bloodied black was threatening him. Why the nerve of the man! Grady was incensed even before he began to realize who he was looking at. The overseer drew himself up and reached for his whip. The boy froze in terror. Grady growled at him as Jallan got up and skittered out of the picture with a couple syringes of his latest concoction. For one long moment Grady stared at the boy.

While Grady faced off against the intruder, Jallan ran around one of the tables he had set up with bubbling experiments, The burner to the right of the blue-cloaked figure flickered as if disturbed by some apparition, then it dawned on Jallan, the reason for the security alarm, everything fit. The blue figure was Michael. The speed boy had returned! Jallan ducked under another table and came up behind Michael who was staring at Grady like he had just seen a ghost and had become a zombie. What better test subject? All it would take was one deft motion. Jallan plunged his syringe towards the intruder's neck. He knew just the spot to stick it and he would have his results in a jiffy.

Blaymore felt the sharp stab in his flesh... but that very real sensation was lost amid the hundreds of false ones that flooded up from the depths of his mind... memories of the torture he'd endured at the hands of the alchemist. The alchemist's jab had loosened them all, and now they came like a monstrous wave across his soul. Why was he feeling it all again? The needles... the knives... the pain...

WHY was he feeling it again!?

It was Grady's doing! Somehow that demon had managed to gain control of his mind! He was making him relive it all again! He had to DIE! Grady had to DIE...

...but fear rooted Blaymore to the spot. It grabbed him and held him with a strength he could not overcome. It was stronger than hate. Stronger than rage. Stronger than all the years that had passed since the horror that now unfolded in Blaymore's mind. Fear. Not a man's fear, but a child's irrational and uncontrollable terror...

Blaymore had been that child once.

And now, he was that child again...

The fear had taken him there. It had thrust him back through the years and locked him in that tortured, bleeding body strapped to Jallan's examination table.

Blaymore wanted to fight, but there was nothing... not the slightest glimmer of strength with which he could force his way back. It had all been drained away by the thing... by the inhuman THING that was even now bearing down on him. The thing that had a man's face, but was far, far to cruel to be a man. The thing that was Grady...

"Well?" Snapped Grady in his most intimidating tone. "Have you got something to say to me, boy?"

 CRACK!

The tip of Grady's whip wrapped around the hilt guard of Blaymore's sword almost as if the whip were a direct extension of the overseer's will. Grady growled and jerked the scimitar from Blaymore's grasp.

The weapon leapt from Blaymore's hands as if the thing had somehow known that he were unworthy of wielding it. The boy who was once a man gasped loudly, and looked at Grady as if apologizing for even possessing such a dangerous toy. Blaymore's fear finally drove him to action.... He took a slow, terrified step back away from the Overseer-

He had to get away... run! Run! RUN!

His balance!

Something... was... wrong...

Blaymore stumbled and fell... his effort to correct his balance threw him almost comically at the Overseer's feet. Blaymore...

...no, Blaymore was gone.

MICHAEL looked up at Grady's stern eyes... eyes that were not glowing or spitting hellfire from their sockets, yet certainly seemed as if they SHOULD be. The boy's lips parted in a cry that was half gasp, half yelp. Trembling, he curled up into a quivering ball of fear on the alchemist's floor.

"...I'm sorry, Saida..." he moaned. "I'm... sorry..."

 

The story continues in [Pedigree]023 Captive Souls 3-4, A continuation of the collaborative episode with author Dark Icon.

copyright 2000-2002, by Rapina

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