Chapter Eight
The next morning Dahlia slipped on her lightweight tunic and pants then pulled her dark, auburn hair into a knot, preparing to run her troops through another exercise. Nel had been progressing nicely over the past week she noted cheerfully, especially since she’d assigned Fidelity to oversee his exercises in mental defenses. Fidelity’s mind was like her chosen weapon, a hammer that pounded at her opponent’s psyche until they crumbled. Not very subtle, but undoubtedly effective.
Dahlia grabbed her own weapons, a set of jet battle axes, and slipped them into the sheath strapped across her hips. An unusual pair, their make and material gave them a lighter weight but an unbreakable strength. She could swing them as fast as the normally lighter swords but back up any cut with their blunt force.
She joined her barrack members, already present on their training ground, and instructed them to pair off and work with their padded or wrapped weapons. Fidelity exchanged her hammer for the wooden one.
Dahlia strode among them as they practiced, correcting as she went. She caught sight of Borreal approaching out of the corner of her eye and drifted closer to him.
“Captain,” he inclined his head.
“Captain,” she returned the nodded greeting. “Any word on progress with the prisoner.”
“We’ve kept him awake. His mental state has greatly weakened and under persuasion from my guard he’s admitted to much but doesn’t seem to be able to divulge his reason for wanting the journal.”
“He’s admitted to being a spy for the emperor's forces and we’ve received some useful tactical information for our efforts,” Borreal continued, “but I’d like you to take a look and see if you can break the concealment that’s been placed on him. There’s no doubt in my mind that the concealment is not of his own making. He’s in no state to continue maintaining it.”
Dahlia nodded and waved Sabir over to her. He broke off from his work with a junior member and jogged over.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Oversee the rest of the team’s training then lead them on a run through the trees around the barrack. I’m going to accompany Captain Borreal.”
Sabir nodded and took over her post, walking through the paired soldiers.
She followed Borreal back past the main building and down into the area prisoners were kept. As they approached Macada’s holding cell she resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose. She knew the methods were necessary but she’d never been a fan of inflicting pain for the sake of pain. A fight and a kill were worlds different from the misery she knew could be housed here.
She braced herself and opened the door to his cell. The traitor didn’t look good. She imagined he wasn’t entirely sane any more. She didn’t look forward to touching his mind. Every time she touched something like that it left a lingering impression, like a scar on her psyche. She was careful to heal and care for her psyche so that the scars didn’t build up over time and drive her into the same misery and despair she’d witnessed.
She steadied herself and looked into his eyes. Natural windows to the mind, they were the easiest place for her to enter. She felt the rush of misery, hopelessness, and confusion surround her but she set out her own boundaries and waded through, brushing past the sensations but never letting them run through her or cling on.
She dug through to the edge of the wall she’d encountered in his memories enclosed in her trap. She approached it sideways, touching it without looking directly at it so as not to activate the mental construct that had been put in place to conceal the wall from her. Then she began to bind it in place so it couldn’t shift away from her as it had before. She located the root of the energy maintaining the concealment on the wall and then slowly disconnected it from the wall. Building on that work, she was able to work the concealment apart from the root. The energy composing the concealment collapsed in on itself, dissolving away and she was able to look directly at the wall.
It was built with spikes of an oily metal coated in a sick, green energy. She sent a bit of energy toward it and the energy turned the same sick green color and began to propel away from the wall. Before it could move out of range, the energy of the wall sucked it back in and held it as the contaminated energy sagged and dissolved.
Dahlia shivered, glad she’d learned not to touch anything unknown. This one was the nastiest she’d ever encountered. She set to work scrubbing it with her own energy, pulling out the sickness, isolating it, and then destroying it bit by bit. Every effort was a fight as the sickness attempted to overwhelm her scrubber and infect it. Occasionally she lost control and had to redirect more energy to bind and destroy the isolated sickness. The wall turned grey as her efforts to neutralize it paid off.
When the wall stood entirely grey she took a few minutes to breathe, balance, and recenter. She tried not to think about what this was doing to the mind it was contained in. The times she lost control the sickness spilled out into Macada’s mind and she could hear him scream on the edge of her awareness. Whoever had placed this did not intend to see it come down without destroying the attacker and the host.
She sent another bit of energy to test the wall again and this time there was no reaction. It merely stood. Good, the next part would be tiring but the mental exertion and risk would be much less. Once again, the process was slow. Bit by bit she tore open the wall until she could get enough of a hold to inject her own energy in and breach it.
The wall unexpectedly collapsed, its spikes recharging with the same sick energy and stabbing into his mind. She heard Macada screaming. Dahlia snapped up her own shield to avoid any spikes hitting her, it was too late for him. She risked a jab into the space beyond the wall and came away with a single vision: a face gaunt and waxy with colorless hair pulled back from a high forehead and grey, cruel eyes. She recognized Ahriman.
She panicked and shot herself out of Macada’s mind, letting it collapse in on itself. She snapped back to the physical room and his screams filled her ears. His eyes rolled back in his head as he foamed at the mouth, the mental destruction causing extreme agony.
“Kill him,” she heard herself say as if from a distance. “There’ll be nothing left and this is cruelty beyond what you can imagine.”
Borreal nodded to his guard and the man swept his sword down, taking Macada’s head from his body and ending the screams. The silence that followed was worse.
They sat in the office of Borreal’s set of rooms. Dahlia sipped a brew of ginger and green tea to try and remove some of the grime clouding her mind and the exhaustion that had set in.
“Dr. Ahriman?” He asked her. She’d just relayed what she’d seen.
“Yes, Captain. He was the same as the last time I saw him. All I caught was a single frame of the memory but I imagine he set the trap in the traitor’s mind. It had the same stamp of evasion and pitilessness that I remember.”
“The research leads are reviewing the journal but they’re being evasive about what relevance the information could hold. I’m not sure if they really don’t know or if they are purposefully being vague.”
“The memory of Ahriman’s research is enough to make anyone edgy.”
“Captain DeMorra, I’ll be frank, I saw your name in that journal.”
Dahlia froze. Chills from horrors remembered ran over her body.
“I need you to tell me what your name was doing in there.”
“I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t know he’d recorded anything about me. You know, of course, that he acquired permission to examine my abilities from the counsel.”
“I do. The writing is cryptic but he references an experiment you were involved in.”
“It was nothing voluntary. I have an uncontrolled amplification of anything I project. Fear, joy, sensuality, violence. It amplifies and then can resonate with anyone I come in contact with if not shielded. He caught it and poked and prodded at the effect as long as he could. He found what scared me or made me angry and then pushed me while I was around his subjects and recorded the effects. Master Ko caught on shortly after this started and Ahriman wasn’t able to access me any longer. He was removed before I encountered him again.”
Borreal’s eyes softened and he pushed the teapot closer to her, “I didn’t know that, I’m sorry.”
“It was cruel but I’ve made my peace with it. It pushed me to hunt down every vulnerability I could and rip it out so they couldn’t be used against me again. The rest I came to terms with and learned to let the pain go so wouldn’t scar my mind any more.”
“Thank you for confiding in me, though I know I put you in a hard position to refuse. I’m sorry for that as well.”
“I understand.” Dahlia bowed her head and poured more tea. She had spoken the truth in that she’d come to terms both with how she’d been used and with the pain. The momentary effect of the memory was brief, if intense, and then it was gone. Her mind returned to its carefully nurtured balance.