Now, Manila
“At this rate we’ll run through all of our power supply in twenty… twenty-two hours,” Maya said.
“I’m guessing that’s if you maintain a constant connection. What if you keep it intermittent? Only make contact when we need to communicate?” Cal said.
“The problem with that is establishing a connection can only be done from up here. The devices with the team lack the capability. Kinda defeats the whole point if they can’t contact us when they need to.”
“What if we check in every fifteen minutes? Thirty?”
Maya shook her head. “Now that we have a stable connection, I don’t want to risk losing it completely. Truth is we have no idea how much tougher it’ll be to get it back the deeper into the fog they go.”
Cal wracked his brain for options. Not that he knew better than the experts. “Those power packs are partially charged by mage-types infusing them with mana. Can’t you do that?”
“Yes, we can, but not nearly as efficiently or as much as true mages,” Louis said.
“Yeah, we don’t have as much mana,” Lexie said.
“I think one of the spear unit has a level or two in Mage,” Cal said.
“Which one? The one with the broken leg?” Maya said flatly.
“Sure, she’s not at a hundred percent, but any little bit will help,” Cal grimaced.
“Should’ve kept one of the mages with us. The drain’s a lot more than I had calculated,” Maya punched the wall.
“Listen. We’ve got almost a full day. Plenty of time for you guys to come up with a solution,” Cal soothed.
“Once this is drained,” Maya gestured to the power supply currently attached to both the communications and scanner setup, “I’ll have the guys take it to the top floor with the solar panels. That’ll give us something to work with after Lexie or Louis infuses it with mana. Might give us a couple of extra hours to work with.”
“See, I knew you could come up with something. Barely took you any time,” Cal grinned.
Maya stared at him without expression for a long moment before she threw her attention back to the laptops.
Hours went by without incident.
There were several quick calls from the group in the fog, but they had nothing to report as they slowly, painstakingly made their way down the high-rise hotel and out onto the streets.
The lack of attacks was worrisome, if welcome.
However, something was tickling at the back of Cal’s neck.
Disturbingly, he couldn’t figure it out.
His telepathic scans into the fog had kept coming up empty.
Still, he kept at it. The emergency evacuation plan depended on him being able to see.
Dad, can you hear me? Cal thought.
Nothing.
“Um, guys,” Pete’s voice shook and drew his attention.
The Pilot was urgently pointing at the floor.
Cal looked down.
Everyone had been so engrossed in their work that they had failed to notice what was creeping up their feet.
The fog seeped through the floor.
Light, wispy gray tendrils curled and grasped around their ankles.
High-pitched screams filled the living room. Not all of it came from Lexie.
Cal tried to sweep it away with a gust of telekinetic force.
The fog merely reformed at calf height.
“It’s moving fast.”
“What do we do?” Maya said.
“Don’t let it get me!” Lexie had jumped to stand on her chair. Just like Louis.
Donald and Jerry were as still as statues, their eyes fixed on the fog swirling around their knees.
“Grab as many supplies as you need and place them as close to those as possible,” Cal calmly pointed to the magitech devices.
“Most of our food and water are on the top floor,” Jerry whispered, as if he thought he’d escape notice by being quiet.
“Alright. You three, get over here,” Cal gestured to Pete and the two mechanics. “You three, stay where you are and don’t move,” he nodded at the R&D Team. He stepped back into his armor as everyone hurried to comply.
“What about the spear unit?” Lexie said.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got them.”
“Is that Calmin?”
An ethereal voice echoed through the suite.
“Damn it,” Cal whispered. He knew what was coming next.
Faint shapes formed out of the swirl of gray mist that was now waist high.
They were all around them.
Human from the looks of it.
Cal glanced at the ceiling.
“What is happening!” Lexie’s eyes were as wide as saucers.
“Help! We’re under attack!” One of the Spearmen in the other room screamed.
“Calm down!” Cal called out. “No one is getting taken.”
The limited sensors in his helmet couldn’t make anything out of the human shapes slowly coalescing out of the gray.
“You shouldn’t have come Calmin. I’m sorry for what is about to happen to you and your friends.”
The voice was clearer now that the fog was at chest height.
Cal wasn’t pleased to realize that he recognized it.
“Is that you, Tito Novy?”
“I’m happy you recognize me.”
“You don’t sound it.”
The fog was now at Cal’s neck. He could still feel the fullness of his power.
No drain until he was fully submerged.
Time to act.
He carved the ceilings open with his telekinesis.
One floor. Two floors. Three floors up.
He lifted everyone up along with the vital equipment all the way to the topmost floor. Hoping that the fog wouldn’t be able to reach. At least for a time.
“You can’t keep them free for long.”
“It takes a massive amount of power to extended the reach. I can sense it. And now, you’re going to be busy with me. I can track the source down,” Cal lied. “It’s going to take a lot to keep me away. You won’t have enough to go after them.”
Only when the fog was over Cal’s head did his uncle and several other relatives take their full shapes.
It was eerie how alive they looked.
Cal probed lightly with his telepathy.
There was something there in his uncle.
How much time did he have before his powers were drained, as had been done to Eron?
He couldn’t waste any of it.
“It hurts me to see you… all of you like this. My mom’s heart will break when I tell her I saw you like this, Tito Novy,” Cal said.
“It is the price of our failure. It will be yours as well.”
His Tito Novy was his mom’s oldest living brother.
Now she had no more living siblings.
“I can free you from this. All you have to do is stand aside,” Cal said.
“Impossible.”
“Then, I’m sorry for this.” Cal latched on to his relatives’ minds.
Indescribable pain blossomed for an instant, for an eternity.
Cal saw.
----------------------------------------
Elsewhere, Elsewhen
On an unknown world.
In an unknown time.
A great empire spanned a continent. Hundreds of kingdoms, cities, nations came together under one.
An Eternal Emperor ruled an Empire of Eternity.
And yet, did anything ever last forever?
The gray had appeared out of nowhere.
All their magic, technology and valiant efforts proved useless.
Time passed and the gray had consumed all but a speck of their once expansive lands.
Nearly all of their people subsumed and forced to fight against their oaths to expanded the gray.
One last light shined out of the gloom.
From the mountaintop palace as large as a city the last remained.
One last airship soared away on magic and steam to an unknown fate over a vast ocean and barely explored lands.
An emperor, the last of his guards and a wizard stood alone in his great hall.
“My emperor, I ask you to reconsider. There is still time for me to teleport you to the airship.”
“I will not leave my people, Idimar. What is an emperor without an empire?”
Idimar gestured to the gigantic doors of the great hall nearly a quarter mile distant from the emperor’s throne. “Even now the Gray Taker enters. It mustn't be allowed to take you!”
“And so, I welcome my citizens one last time.”
“They are not of the empire. They are but shades of what once were our people.”
“That’s where you are wrong, Idimar.” Violet eyes shined. “They are and will always be my people.” His voice grew softer. “The gray cannot be allowed to continue.”
“You mustn’t do this. Allow me to take you away, please! The empire is eternal. You are eternal!”
“I’ve watched ages pass. I will not allow this entity from another place to win. Are you prepared, Idimar? My loyal guards?”
The guards roared.
Idimar bowed his head in defeat.
“My loyal guard. I grant you one last boon. So long as this place remains you will not be allowed to fall. You will be stronger in every way until the end, not one instant more. Emperor’s Charge: Avenge Us All.”
The emperor rose from his throne. He stood tall and strong. “Citizens of the empire. I call upon you. As I serve you to eternity, so shall you. No monster, no matter how powerful can subvert our oaths. All Will Serve The Empire of Eternity,” his voice boomed.
Overwhelming, oppressive power emanated from the emperor.
All throughout the capital city shades began to turn on shades.
Citizens of the empire fought the monsters one last time.
The emperor’s tall form suddenly collapsed. He sat down in his throne. Back stiff, head up, eyes stared straight.
Violet shined, but saw nothing.
“Lord of the Eternal Guard,” Idimar said stiffly. “The Eternal Emperor has given you a sacred charge. What will you do to see it through?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Everything.”
Idimar regarded the last remnants of what was once a force thousands strong.
The pride of the empire.
The Eternal Guards.
Armed with lighting pikes, steel blasters and the famed panoply of light.
What could they do now even with the boon?
They had fallen in their thousands. Failed to protect the Eternal City.
“I am the Wizard of Eternity,” Idimar began. “And, yet, I see my end. I’ve two more spells in me. My greatest, my last.” His staff trembled in his four-fingered grip as he raised it. Words tumbled from his mouth. The staff flared with blinding light so strong that even the eternal guards were forced to shield their eyes.
Idimar slammed the butt of his staff on the pristine marbled floor, sending cracks spider-webbing out for hundreds of feet in all directions.
When the light dimmed a great dome had encased the emperor’s throne dais.
Arcane formulations crisscrossed the surface of the glowing dome.
“I will hold long enough for you to do what you must, Lord Alanavi. I will not let the gray touch our emperor.”
“Then send us, so that we may bring vengeance upon it.”
“I… Wish…” Idimar paused, “for the Eternal Guard to be at the source of the gray.”
The guard vanished. One moment there. The next gone. Not even a ripple of space, like the distortion from a teleport.
Idimar sagged to the floor.
His vibrant pink skin had suddenly grown pale, nearly white.
He had drained himself of his very life force.
All that remained were mere embers to be huddled over against the encroaching dark.
Cal blinked.
A seaside village.
Nets hanging outside simple homes, simpler boats on the shore marked its people as fishermen.
Hard work, but the people looked happy.
Tanned from the sun and fit from the physical labor.
They fished for food.
Traded a portion of their catch for what they needed.
And they didn’t need for much.
One fisherman could bring in much more than a normal human could. For these people had four arms, four hands.
An idyllic life ended in an instant when the gray mist appeared in the middle of their village one day.
The light of three distant moons shined down on the shrouded village.
Silence reined for a time while the gray crept farther into the surrounding lushness.
A mighty gust of wind broke the stillness.
A shape hovered above the once happy place, borne aloft on leathery wings sprouting out of a broad, muscular back. Dark scales, mingled with bronze flesh.
The shape dived down into the center of the village and landed in a crouch.
Sharp talons on his toes carved groves in the dirt.
A sign of barely restrained anger.
“I see you. Where are the people?” The deep voice contained power.
In response, shades of said people came out of the swirling mists.
Their faces were shocked and horrified as if they couldn’t believe what they were doing.
They swarmed.
He ignored their ineffectual blows.
“Release them and I will grant you a quick death.”
“There is none,” one of the shades said.
“You will become,” another spoke.
Sadness flickered across the man’s face. He bared sharp teeth as smoke began to leak from the corners of his too-wide mouth. Red slit pupils shined in the gray gloom.
“Invader. You will pay for taking my people. I am the mightiest of all Mythicals. I have taken the blood and flesh of a dragon. That power flows in me. Have a taste.”
Dark flame bloomed out of the man’s mouth.
Daylight revealed nothing of the village.
The land was blackened, charred.
The gray was gone.
The mighty beating of wings could be heard in the distance.
Cal blinked.
A wall that was not a wall turned into a display.
The view was from high above.
It showed an island or a continent completely consumed by gray fog.
It was difficult to judge the scale. There were measurements on the display, but they were in an unknown language.
“The conclaves are in agreement,” five eyes flashed bright colors.
“The evacuations?” crystalline skin lit up with bio-luminescent light in response.
“They have decreed that optimum population numbers have been reached for all orbital and lunar habitats.”
“Enacting Shardfall Protocol,” six eyes flashed dull, muted colors.
The image on the display was consumed in a bright flash of light.
Cal blinked.
----------------------------------------
Now, Manila
Cal could already feel his powers slowly slipping away.
He sped up his thought processes so that a moment became many minutes from his perspective.
What had he just witnessed?
Real.
It had to be.
The gray fog on other worlds?
Or predecessors?
He learned two important things.
There was a source entity as he had theorized and it could be destroyed with enough power.
With that information secured he pushed himself up with a burst of telekinesis, seeking to rise above the fog.
Only to discover that he was standing back on the floor.
There was no transition.
He was certain he had flown up.
“There’s no escaping now,” Tito Novy said.
The shades of his relatives had physical forms.
He broke the floors beneath their feet dropping them as far as he could.
He couldn’t see anything beyond a few feet aside from the thick, misty gray mass. Relying on his slowly disappearing extra sensory powers he located the glass sliding door to the patio.
He could sense energy out there. It felt like magic. He had memorized all the warded sanctuary locations Eron had provided in his message.
It was his best option if he couldn’t leave the fog.
A faint red glow rose up from below.
It was his uncle’s forcefield projection. A giant red fist as big as Cal’s torso came shooting out of the swirling gray.
He barely managed to raise a telekinetic shield to stop it cold.
A second giant red hand came grasping for him.
He telekinetically threw a couch at it to knock it of course.
Tito Novy became visible in the swirling gray soup. His red forcefield traced the outline of his body.
“Do your best, Calmin.”
“It’d be nice if you fought off its control.”
“There is no fighting it.”
Cal sensed the others making their way back up to his floor.
“Is that what you want me to tell my mom? That you gave up and you tried to kill her sons? Your nephews?”
“If you speak with her again then that means you’ve managed to do what we failed to. In that case, I wouldn’t have any last words for her. I’d be content that you were able to escape this hell. I truly hope you do see your mom again. Alongside your brother and dad.”
Red hands struck.
Cal dodged and threw himself toward the sliding door.
A heavy weight dropped on his back and bore him to the floor.
Punches battered the back of his helmet.
One of his relatives from his father’s side.
Cal shoved the person off with a telekinetic blast.
More faint glows appeared in the fog to join Tito Novy’s.
Relatives from his mother’s side.
Cal scrambled to his feet and threw everything inside the suite into a telekinetic storm of whirling debris.
Lights flashed as forcefields blocked jagged bits of wood and large chunks of furniture.
Men and women grunted with pain as their supertough bodies took the impacts.
Cal propelled himself through the glass and the balcony railing.
Gravity took hold and pulled him down.
Dwindling telekinesis couldn’t resist its inexorable pull.
Flight turned into a glide.
He aimed for the closest magical energy signature. Even now it was dimming in his perceptions.
The barely-controlled descent was into gray nothingness. He couldn’t see the streets below, nor the buildings in this path.
One of which he crashed into.
Cal moved with a purpose out of the store he had partially demolished.
He ran through the fog covered streets.
Shade monsters leapt out at him.
He struck out with his telekinesis only to be surprised by how weak it was. He was reduced to punching and kicking his way past the monsters.
His senses dwindled steadily. It was like ear plugs and a blindfold being slowly put in place.
He could still physically see and hear, but it felt so… insufficient.
He felt diminished.
Something big came lumbering out of the fog.
He grabbed a light pole and batted it away to dissolve in a swirl of gray mist.
The pole finally broke several streets down as he had continued to batter the shade monsters.
He charged through a home taking a direct path to his destination, which loomed in the distance.
Finally, the magical energy signature grew faint, but he could see the glow, shining like a lighthouse in front of him.
He sprinted forward, ignoring the monsters, running through them and knocking them aside like tackling dummies.
He was on the last dregs of his mental powers when he reached a home with a waning sigil on the wall.
The door was locked and he didn’t have time to knock.
His vision grew dark around the edges.
He could barely sense four people inside the home.
Two young men and two young women.
It was a good thing that Eron had the foresight to give him access.
He broke the lock and promptly collapsed face first into the warded home.
With darkness came another vision.
----------------------------------------
Now, Manila
Something enormous, long and sinuous circled around Madalena in the thick, nearly opaque fog. It left immense ripples in the otherwise still gray.
She held the ward close to her chest.
The sigil glowed softly and pulsed with a gentle light that she felt provided a warm, soothing sensation in her chest. She focused on this feeling whether it was only a trick of her mind or genuine.
The only sounds on the empty streets were her booted steps and her breathing. Nothing else. The city was long dead. Only ghosts remained.
She made it to her target sanctuary without incident only for her heart to sink upon seeing that every vehicle parked outside of the small house had been pounded into scrap or sliced to pieces.
Searching farther down the street and into side streets yielded the same result.
There was no choice. They would just have to walk back.
She recalled Eron’s description of the ward expanding to cover the entire van when it had only extended a few feet from his body, as it had done for her. Perhaps an instinctive effect of Lilah’s magic allowed it to shift depending on the number of people it needed to protect.
Madalena hurried back to the warded house. It was going to be a long walk for normal people and the sooner they returned the quicker she could provide some ease to Lilah’s suffering. They didn’t have much time. The thought that Dr. Rufo could’ve been wrong about how much Lilah had left continued to twist in her mind like a screw in her hand.
A fog-shrouded figure loomed ahead. Just outside the reach of the glowing sigil on the house’s front door.
“Are you really going to risk all their lives on that flimsy thing?”
“You’re not Tito Carlos,” Madalena held Lilah’s ward up like a shield.
“I think I’m me. The things I do… I don’t want to and I do. Maybe, you’re right,” the old man shrugged.
“New trick?” Madalena nodded at the destroyed vehicles. “You’ve done this at all the other sanctuaries? If I were you I would’ve done it sooner.”
“I remember when you were small. Three, four…”
Madalena could almost believe that her great-uncle truly stood before her by the way his tone turned wistful. As it always had when he told old stories. No matter how often he had repeated the same ones.
“For some reason you were very interested in the steam coming out of the rice cooker. Everyone kept moving you away and warning you, but you just had to know what hot steam felt like,” Tito Carlos shook his head ruefully. “Your mom was very upset with everyone.”
Madalena had heard the same story many times. “She should’ve been. Why would you all put the rice cooker on the floor in the first place?”
“There was no space on the counters!” Tito Carlos threw his hands up. “Too full of food trays.”
The fog really did a great job at faking her relatives. For a moment she was fooled. It really did feel like her great-uncle.
“Then at least put some chairs around it,” Madalena said softly. The words were spoken with a practiced air.
Tito Carlos nodded at her.
She thought she saw sadness in his eyes, but dismissed it as another trick of the fog.
“What are you really trying to do? Why tell this story? It doesn’t prove anything other than that the fog thing that killed you has your memories. That’s a reasonable assumption.”
Tito Carlos eyed the destroyed vehicles. “That it just takes time and experience for babies to learn. Once burned… well, you certainly stayed away from rice cookers after that. I think you were scared of them until high school.”
“A message? Or a trick? A trap?”
“Your situation has changed. There was chance, a small window for you and Eron to escape, but… knowledge and strength gained combined with a new, dangerous threat. Your talismans won’t be able to hold back what’s coming.”
A sad smile was swallowed by the swirling mist.
She watched him vanish.
The oppressive silence returned and she allowed it to press around her.
Lilah’s ward seemed to pulse faster in response. It spurred Madalena toward the sanctuary.
She remembered what she was here to do.
There was no time to waste.
It took longer than she wanted to convince the people to go with her. For obvious reasons she didn’t tell them the full truth. In the end they all agreed to go.
Madalena had stretched the truth. Told them that Lilah wasn’t going to be able to come renew the sanctuary’s wards. That they needed to go to the main one.
What choice did they have?
The portable ward pulsed urgently as it, thankfully, widened its area of effect to envelope the tightly huddled group of fifteen.
Human shapes appeared and disappeared out of the swirling mists surrounding them.
Minutes felt like hours to Madalena while she clutched the ward close to her chest. Its warmth providing comfort in the gloom.
The group had traveled what felt like a good distance on the silent streets when the whispers began.
“Ignore them. They aren’t real. It’s a trick.” Madalena remembered Eron’s story.
“Maria?” a stocky middle-aged man at the front whispered in a voice filled with horror and longing.
“It’s not her, Jason,” an older woman urgently grabbed the sleeve of the man’s jacket.
“No, no, no,” Jason whispered.
“Shit,” Madalena cursed.
She saw the way Jason leaned toward the indistinct shape in the fog. Saw him tense as a hesitant step turned into an all out sprint.
“That’s my wife!”
The older woman screamed in surprise as she was pulled by the man’s desperate strength.
“Grab them!” Madalena tried to push her way through the tightly-packed people. Mindful of her strength, she couldn’t risk hurting them.
Too late.
Jason had stepped outside of the ward’s protection even as it pulsed faster in what seemed to be an attempt to increase its radius.
A pained shout was muffled by the dense mist.
Then only the sounds of soft sobs.
The old woman, Delia, had been grabbed at the last second by a pair of brave teenagers who had rushed after her. The three of them were on the asphalt, hands and elbows scuffed by their fall.
The warm glow of Lilah’s ward engulfed them as Madalena and the others clustered around them.
“Damn it,” Madalena said. “I told you. It’s a trap. Don’t listen to them. They aren’t real…”
It was a long, terrifying walk of many miles back to the sanctuary.
The whispers followed them all the way.
With one new addition.
“You let me die.” Jason’s voice reached each of them.