Training Exercise

Sergeant Darintini stood at attention as the captain in charge of the exercise provided his final briefing. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before.

“So, Sergeant, you’re responsible for finding out what this group of men are actually made of. I’m sure you remember your own survival mission.”

This required a response, so he made the effort.

“Yes, Captain. We were taken to the high dunes towards the centre of the desert and told to find our way to the base of a specific mountain to the south. It took us nearly two days, since we kept getting turned around by the shifting sands.”

“Yes, well, you shouldn’t have that problem this time. Fewer dunes in the northern wastes, anyway. Not that I’m sure that I approve of the… innovations involved. We’ve never needed their help in the past with this sort of thing after all.”

The captain’s eyes moved to focus over Darintini’s shoulder, and he half-turned, although he already knew what he would see.

About thirty feet away, a tall, skinny figure stood waiting patiently. He was dressed in the robes of the Guild Mages and his forehead was prominently branded with a complex set of markings which betokened an important position within the Guild. Or at least, so Darintini assumed. The more complicated the sigil, the more senior the member was the usual rule, which he assumed held true in this case.

The captain looked back to address Darintini once more.

“Just be polite to him, and he’ll likely do the same. The latest initiative has been agreed at the highest levels. In any case, you’re clear on your briefing?”

“Yes, Captain. The Mage will transport me and a team of five trainees into the northern wastelands with our equipment. Our mission is to reach an oasis somewhere to the south of our starting point, where we’ll be met by the testing team. At that point, I make my report on the performance to date and hand over to them to complete the readiness testing.”

“And don’t lose too many of your men on the way, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Darintini smiled faintly at this, although against his better judgement. Training casualties during the final testing were not uncommon, but it reflected badly on the officer concerned. He was under few illusions that this was a test not only of the men but also of his own ability to command.

“No, Sir,” he replied blandly.

“Very well, Sergeant. Well, let’s not keep the Guild member waiting.”

The Captain led the way over to the mage. Darintini suddenly realised how young the Guild member actually was. By the look of him, he was barely out of his teens, at least five or ten years younger than Darintini himself.

The captain started to salute, but suddenly thought better of it halfway and turned it into a fierce stare at a clipboard he was holding.

“Master… err… Logross, I believe?” he asked the other man.

The Mage smiled self-deprecatingly.

“A very junior Master, yes,” he replied. “Assigned to provide transportation services for the Sergeant and his men. I believe the men are already assembled with their equipment in the transport circle, so if we’re ready to proceed?”

“Lead the way, Master,” confirmed the captain.

The Mage directed the two men through a cave entrance into the Guild enclave within the training base. They walked down a ramp and through a series of passageways into a room which contained a bare expanse of floor decorated with a wide circular engraving. In the centre of the circle slouched the five soldiers that Darintini was to take command of for the exercise. A pile of kit also lay within the circle, and Darintini quickly located his own pack and carefully checked through it to ensure that his supplies were all present.

Not that he hadn’t already checked it repeatedly, but he always grew nervous when it was out of his sight for any period of time. He paid special attention to his rations and water supplies, and to the various weapons and other tools that he considered essential for the exercise. Some of them had been with him since his own survival test. He also cast an eye over the remainder of his team. Each of them had remembered their short swords, and he counted two bows and three pikes amongst them, which was correct.

When he was finished, and his team confirmed they were ready to proceed, he turned to the Guild Master to discover what came next. He supposed he should be grateful for the Guild assistance in sending them to their starting point, but as far as he was concerned it introduced another unknown into a situation which already made him nervous. The Mage was doing his best to put him at his ease, however.

“So, Sergeant, I’m guessing you haven’t been transported before, is that correct?” he asked in a bored tone.

Darintini confirmed this and waited for him to continue.

“You may find it… unnerving, but it will be over quickly. There will be a blue light and a brief period of disorientation each time.”

“Each time, sir?”

“Yes, I’ll be moving you twice. The first time will take us all to a transport nexus in the Guild Temple where I’ll receive my instructions as to your final destination. Then I’ll send you and your men onwards, and you can get on with your mission.”

“Understood, sir. Let me brief my men, and you can proceed.”

The Guild Master nodded and stood gazing at nothing Darintini could identify while he quickly re-checked that his men were ready, warning them of what Master Logross had said. Once this was done, Master Logross joined them within the engraved circle and became locked in concentration for a few minutes. Initially, there was only silence, but at the point that the men became restless and looked at each other, the Mage nodded minimally.

The next moment, there was a blinding blue flash, and Sergeant Darintini found himself suddenly in a cold, dark space that was pressing in on him from all directions at once. The sensation was entirely unprecedented in the Sergeant’s experience, and the only saving grace was that he appeared to be entirely isolated, so his men didn’t witness his momentary loss of control.

And then, normal sensations rushed back around him, and he found himself and his men standing in a different carved circle, in a wide cavern whose floor was filled with an expanse of similar carvings. At the other end of the room he saw a detachment of soldiers, Guild Guards by their uniforms, and another Mage, a woman, with similar forehead tattoos to Master Logross.

The latter stepped out of their circle, gesturing for them to stay put and strode over to the desk behind which the other mage was sitting. Darintini eavesdropped on their conversation.

“Duty Master,” he began formally, “I believe you have a beacon code for me?”

“Logross,” she replied. “I see you collected the latest batch of meat-heads successfully. Let me check my instructions for where you should dump them.”

Darintini tensed at the derogatory reference to himself and his men, but forced himself not to react further. The female mage had spoken softly, and he doubted his men had caught the reference.

“Here’s the code. Do you need to write that down?”

“No, thank you, I can remember it,” replied Logross, glancing quickly at the book. “Where on earth is that? It looks like a very early code.”

“I’m not sure, but it was the destination referenced by my instructions,” the duty master replied. “Let me look it up…”

She pulled another book out from under the desk and glanced through it while Logross watched.

“It looks like a fairly primitive transport circle in the northern wastelands. It was first established by some sort of research team. As far as I know, it hasn’t been used much in centuries, but it’s on the confirmed active list.”

“Very well,” replied Logross, and turned and walked back towards the Sergeant. Then he paused and turned back.

“Do you have a locator for them to take with them?”

“Why bother?” replied the other Guild member. “It’s not as if they’ll be able to activate it. Besides, my instructions say nothing about that, and none of the others we’ve dispatched have taken one.”

Master Logross paused as if in thought, and then continued.

“Humour me,” he replied. “Besides, you know I only recently mastered the transport working. I wouldn’t want to lose them.”

The other mage was tempted to argue, but something in Logross’s look quelled her.

“Very well,” she replied. “Lieutenant, an emergency beacon, if you please.”

One of the Guards walked to a nearby cupboard and extracted something about the size of a clenched fist. He removed a paper tag and showed it to Master Logross before handing it to the Duty Master, who laboriously noted down some sort of code in yet another book. Master Logross took the item from the Guard and returned to Darintini.

He handed Darintini a rough chunk of crystal, which contained an engraving or inclusion. The sergeant gazed at it curiously.

“Please keep this safe,” said Master Logross. “It will come in handy if there’s a problem. If everything goes smoothly, you can return it to the officers running the test, and they’ll know how to get it back to us.”

Darintini nodded, none the wiser, and stowed it away in one of the external pockets of his pack. He then waited as Master Logross took up a position some distance from the circle.

“I wish you the best of luck with your mission, Sergeant,” he said, and Darintini thanked him. Then Master Logross’s eyes went blank again as he concentrated. There was another blue flash, and Darintini and his squad disappeared from the cavern.

Master Logross turned and walked towards the exit from the chamber, before halting at a call from the Duty Master.

“Logross, I nearly forgot to tell you. Master Leltopin sent a message that she would appreciate a word when you were done with this chore.”

Master Logross nodded grimly and then turned once more and strode from the transport hub.

***

Again the blue flash and the sudden, unendurable cold, and then Sergeant Darintini and his men found themselves somewhere else.

For a few moments, they stood there gaping at the surrounding. The transport ring itself looked fairly similar to the two others that they’d passed through in the last few minutes. Perhaps the script was more ancient but, frankly, he couldn’t tell. It had clearly been brushed clear of sand and dust recently, but there were no tracks leading in any direction.

All around them, however, the scenery was very different. The transport circle had been established in a landscape of giant red rocky outcrops, many large enough to block out any vision of the broader surroundings. The stones themselves were bulbous and looked strangely organic, covered in weird bulges and shadowed indentations which resembled muscles rippling in the sand raised by the late afternoon breezes.

Here and there, the occasional cactus plant, small and twisted but covered in long, dangerous spines, formed the only break from the tortured landscape.

It was, indeed, a landscape very distinct from that in the deep desert where the sergeant had done his own survival training, or even that of the military training camp where his men had been based, and he could hear them muttering to each other.

“Do you think they were formed by magic?”

“No, by the wind, stupid.”

“But what caused the wind… ?”

That was enough of that, thought the sergeant. The best strategy was to keep his team active and keep their minds off their concerns.

“Privates Jamini and Tryallin, take some sightings and work out the direction we’re meant to be heading. Try to get on top of that rock formation; it looks easy enough to climb and should provide a view of the surroundings. Our destination oasis is to the south, remember. The rest of you range out and establish a perimeter. This is an unfamiliar location, so we’ve got no idea of what wild animals we might find, or rather might find us. Keep an eye out for tracks.”

For a moment, he thought the men, overawed by the landscape, might raise objections, but the moment passed and they headed off on their various tasks. Leaving him to survey the immediate surroundings. On a couple of nearby rocks he discovered an array of carved words which might once have conveyed a long and detailed message, but the Zaronian script was too old, and far too weathered to make it out. Instructions from some long ago survey mission, perhaps?

About ten minutes later, the team he’d assigned to work out the direction returned, pointing the direction in which they should head. He wasn’t particularly surprised that they had got it right; they should have been able to determine it from a quick glance at the position of the sun. Still, they confirmed there should be no particular problem with them going that way. The rocky outcrops, although massive individually, were usually widely enough spaced that they should be able to pick their way forward, and there was no sign of any insuperable obstructions in the terrain such as cliffs or nearby mountain ranges.

The information from the perimeter team was more concerning. Lots of animal tracks in the dust, including not only wolf prints but other larger impressions that the men hadn’t been able to identify. Best to keep the team closely together in this maze of rocks lest some outliers get picked off individually.

“All right, let’s head off. We should be able to make a few hours of progress tonight before we need to find somewhere to camp. Loltin and Regurthin, you take point. Bax and Jamini, keep an eye out behind us. Tryallin, guide us in the direction you spied out before.”

They began to move, mostly freely, but occasionally having to squeeze between rock formations which looked ominously like squatting giant creatures huddled together as if to whisper secrets to each other.

He was pleased to see their training kicking in well. Each man moved carefully in the unfamiliar terrain, giving himself space, but keeping an eye on his fellows to ensure that nothing was creeping up behind them. The shadows and dark hollows between the stones as the sun began to set didn’t help with either the visibility or the vaguely oppressive mood, however.

***

“You left word that you would like to see me, Master,” said Logross.

“Ah, Master Logross, how delightful,” replied the older woman.

Master Leltopin was in what even her most dedicated admirers might have described as her middle years, with white hair streaming down to her shoulders. Her features were strong, but predatory. Master Logross always thought of her as looking a little like a vulture, but then he supposed he was prejudiced by the circumstances.

“You had no trouble transporting the team from the Zaronian military to their destination, I assume?” she continued, careful to keep her attention locked on him with no sign of boredom or distraction.

“No trouble at all,” replied Logross. “I told you I’ve thoroughly mastered the site-to-site transport working. In fact, I’m on my way to mastering the gateway extension.”

“You did tell me that, yes,” replied Leltopin. “Your dedication does credit, both to you and your poor, unfortunate dead Master. I merely thought that you might have had problems with the destination beacon code. I gathered it was in an unusual format.”

Logross flushed. Leltopin was never anything but politeness itself, but she always got him on the defensive. And as for that dig about his former Master, she knew well that he blamed her and her faction for the man’s untimely death, sucked into one or other of their schemes. Best keep away from that subject.

“About the destination? I was wondering how it was chosen? I couldn’t help noticing that it was marked with danger markers in the Duty Master’s book.”

“To be frank, I believe it was chosen as the only platform we had in the rough environs of the Zaronian military’s target zone. Yes, I was told that there were out-dated danger markers related to some old ruins, but no-one has bothered to recheck the area for many, many years. I’m sure the dangers were exaggerated, but in any case if the soldiers get on with their mission and avoid poking their noses into affairs that don’t concern them, then they’ll be fine.

“But surely we owe some duty of care to the people we transported in?”

“The Guild was asked to carry out certain transportation duties as part of an agreement negotiated through the Royal Court. We have no responsibilities to the Zaronian military beyond that point, end of story. If there is a subsequent incident, then the army can negotiate for additional assistance. Perhaps in time, they’ll learn the limits of their competence and learn that they need to leave certain matters to the Guild.”

Leltopin sounded more shrill than she had before. Was it possible she had been stung by Logross’s comment? Or more likely, it was a pose to shut him down and close the subject. Master Logross had learnt that she treated agreements and rules extremely literally. Although she clearly cared about the Guild, she clearly had a very different vision about what it could, and should, be than himself.

“I’m sorry, Master,” he replied, “I was asking for instruction. I didn’t mean to suggest that…” He let his statement trail off.

“Of course,” she replied, all sweetness and light again. “Given your competence, I forget that you’re still such a very new Master. Still struggling with the additional constraints and rules dictated by your latest Seal. I can only direct you to trust their judgements on your behaviour.”

Again with the mention of the damnable Seals. Logross had been frustrated enough by the Seals, magically enforced contracts, that had been imposed on him before he’d been appointed to the rank of Master. But those had only limited what he could learn to a pace dictated by the curriculum and constrained the behaviour of his bonded Glowling companion. He’d foolishly thought that becoming a Master might lift the restrictions, but the truth was frighteningly different.

Instead, he found that his Master Seal offered him advice continually on the correct course of action in line with the Guild rules and, worse, forced his compliance on some issues. He’d heard rumours that it also possessed the ability to compel behaviour and even change his opinions in some scenarios. The ‘Safeguards and Contingencies’, as they were called.

Still, he’d already developed his own coping mechanisms. He’d found that it could only read surface thoughts, and found it difficult to distinguish between idle speculation, which was on the whole permitted, and strong suspicions verging on belief. And as long as he framed his own decisions in terms unobjectionable to the Seals, and the Construct which sat behind them, he was able to bypass the worst of the enforcement.

Leltopin’s voice broke into this reverie.

“I wanted to check whether you had had any further thoughts on taking on an apprentice?”

Logross focused. “No, Master Leltopin. I honestly feel that I’ve got such a lot to learn as a new Master, and so much that I can contribute in other ways, that it would be premature at this point.”

There, no mention of his intention to find more ways to work around the teachings dictated by the Construct before he took on an apprentice. Both Leltopin and his Seals fooled.

“I understand. And honestly, your combat skills are sufficiently strong that I’m sure that we will be able to put them to very good use elsewhere. I will come back to you when we’ve identified a suitable mission, then.”

It was clearly a dismissal, no matter how charmingly phrased. Logross left.

***

Sergeant Darintini’s trainees hadn’t covered as much ground as he’d hoped before the sun dipped out of sight and the temperature chilled. As the shadows lengthened, his men’s training slipped, and they pressed more closely together as if in a sense of mutual comfort.

Finally, he gave the instructions to halt, dispatching two men to find a suitable place to camp overnight. While they waited, he had the other soldiers collect pieces of dried cactus and anything else that might burn. The two explorers returned quickly with news of an overhang in a cleft in a rockface that offered enough space for them to huddle underneath. Not ideal - he’d been hoping for a cave - but good enough for a single night.

The fire was duly laid and lit, and the men sat around eating their rations and talking. Darintini was nervous about the animal prints that they had seen earlier and established a rota for watches throughout the night. He would take the final stint himself in the hour before dawn.

That settled, he lay down and tried to sleep. Despite the stress and tiredness of the day, he found it difficult to get to sleep at first. The night winds were making an eerie whistling noise as they blew through the crevices and gaps in the surrounding stones, and in the muddled turmoil of his brain before he finally dropped off, he couldn’t help thinking of the rocks as sleeping giants wheezing and snoring in their sleep.

When he awoke, he knew immediately that something was wrong. For a start, the first cold light of dawn was creeping in between the towering cliffs around him. He should have been awakened for his shift some time before. It was cold as well. The flames of the fire had burnt away some time before, with a pile of unburnt material still stacked to the side unused. He sat up suddenly and made a quick count. Only four soldiers: one, Bax, who had had the third watch, was missing.

At a barked order, the others gradually emerged back to life, muttering and complaining about stiffness and tiredness.

A quick search of the campsite yielded no immediate clues; there were no bloodstains, no marks where a body could have been dragged away by an ambitious predator, only footprints where the men had patrolled. Jamini confirmed he had awakened Bax on schedule to take his watch. The fire had still been burning then, and the wind had dropped, leaving behind a terrible stillness. There had been no sign of animals or other threats. The only challenge to the watch had been that of staying awake.

Darintini sent the remaining privates out in pairs to search the nearby labyrinth of crevices for any sign of the missing man. It took nearly thirty minutes for one pair to achieve any success. A quick shout called Darintini to their side in the lee of a particularly large standing stone. They stood there, looking at the dark fracture in the ground and the disruption of the sand all around.

The sergeant could picture it now. Bax had, like the others, ranged out from the camp to keep himself awake. In the darkness of the night, he hadn’t noticed the hole. Perhaps he had wanted to inspect the stone in whose lee it lay, perhaps he had heard a sound, but in any case, he had walked right over it. A brief struggle as he had flung his arms out to prevent himself from disappearing beneath the surface, but to no avail. He might never have had a chance to cry out for help.

Darintini crouched close to the ground.

“Private Bax? Bax, are you down there?”

Was that a sound? A muttered gasp? He repeated his call.

There. It was faint, but undeniable. Someone, or something was calling from down below. He struggled to make out the words.

“Sergeant… you… fallen… leg… Many passages…”

After a few minutes, Darintini thought he’d made out the gist of the message. Bax had slipped into the crevice and injured his leg in the fall. There was a more extensive set of tunnels down there, but in his current crippled state the private was unable to investigate them.

The sergeant sat back, chewing his lower lip. Army doctrine was clear, and aligned with his own inclination. You didn’t leave your men behind. They would need to rescue Bax, but it was unclear how. Their mission had been one of desert survival and they had brought no rope or other climbing equipment. They’d seen no other entrances to an underground complex, and he was reluctant to let his men stray too far from the current spot and risk losing it in the maze of boulders.

Still they had to do something, and the other men were becoming restless. Best give them something to do.

“All of you, bring your equipment to this point, and bring as much of the firewood as remains. Once you’d done that, Jamini and Tryallin, do what you can to widen this opening, and the other two rekindle the fire. Next, we’ll take up a guard position. We don’t want to be ambushed while we work.”

The soldiers sprang into action, clearly relieved by the sign that the sergeant was taking command of the situation.

After a half-hour of work, the strategy was showing some dividends. The fire had been relit from the embers and Jamini and Tryallin had successfully dug dirt and small rocks to reveal a wider sloping shaft leading down into the dark. Bax had been capable enough to pull himself away from where he had landed in response to the cascade of small debris caused by the digging and Darintini was prepared to toss a burning piece of cactus into the abyss in the hope of getting more information.

The bottom of the hole was around thirty feet below ground level, but the first fifteen feet of the shaft were slanted at a sharp angle, which would slow any fall. The smoothness of the stone revealed that this was no kind of natural phenomenon, but rather the entrance to a man-made complex of some kind. Perhaps an air vent or a chimney? That had both good points and bad points. It probably guaranteed that there would be some more accessible exit from the tunnels, but came with more potential unknowns. For a start, who could have built something out here in the wilderness? It was unlikely to be the Guild, or they surely wouldn’t have sent them without a warning of some kind, but that left few other plausible alternatives.

Darintini came to a decision reluctantly. A minimum of three men would be required for any kind of rescue mission, but two men was simply too few to leave stranded on the surface by themselves. They would all venture below in pursuit of their missing comrade.

They made some preparations, cutting down some scrubby nearby tree limbs that might be employed as a makeshift splint or stretcher, and dropping down as many pieces of dried cactus as they could locate before venturing down themselves.

The actual descent proved surprisingly easy. The diagonal entrance shaft was wide enough to provide access but narrow enough to brace oneself against to guard against an uncontrolled slide. Once they reached the end of the shaft, it was then possible for each man to hang down before attempting the final drop. In a very few minutes, the squad was all down in a wide underground chamber, clustered around the unfortunate Bax.

Darintini checked quickly. The leg was definitely broken, and they quickly applied a splint to hold it straight. Other than the shock and the pain, Bax’s worst symptom was dehydration, and that was quickly treated from the supplies they had brought with them.

That done, the sergeant wandered around the room, in the light of a burning cactus branch. Definitely man-made but, by the thickness of the dust on the floor, deserted a long time before. The walls had been carved with symbols and carvings that Darintini could not understand, but resembled nothing he’d ever seen. They were certainly no form of the Zaronian language with which he was familiar.

Here and there, iron torch holders were set into the wall, sometimes still filled with the remains of the torches themselves, but both were truly ancient and crumbled practically as soon as he looked at them. A stone door blocked the exit from the room but, as he tried to force it open, it toppled inwards as the hinges fell away. A passageway led away in both directions. Surely one direction must lead to safety?

Now that Bax was stabilised, Darintini sent a group of two soldiers in one direction down the tunnel to spy out the lay of the land. They returned in a disappointingly short time to report that the passage itself was blocked by a rockfall after a couple of turns, and that none of the rooms they’d checked had any more to recommend them than this one.

While they checked the other way, Darintini took another look at the hole in the ceiling. Without a rope or a makeshift ladder it was likely out of reach, even if they tried climbing on each other’s shoulders. And that wouldn’t solve the problem of how to get Bax out of there.

He heard shouts of alarm and what sounded like claps of thunder from outside the room, down the tunnel where the exploration team had gone and rapidly broke off his calculations. Returning to the door, he quickly saw the men returning, one with a fresh gash across his arm, backing around the next corner before turning and breaking into a run.

“Trouble, Sergeant,” said the injured Regurthin, while his fellow soldier, Loltin, quickly began to string his bow. “There’s a whole den of lightning lizards down here. It looks as if they’ve made a nest.”

Sergeant Darintini swore quietly to himself. Whilst the green lightning lizards weren’t the most formidable of the magical creatures found in the Zaronian desert, their size, growing nearly three feet from snout to tail, and their thick skin which resisted most human weapons, made them a significant threat. And that was before considering the lightning that they could summon at will.

And if they were present, it was entirely possible that other magical creatures would be around as well. For reasons that escaped him, they often cropped up in the same locales. What could they hope to do against a vizzinti, a giant fire snake? Or even a pack of the carnivorous spiders known as spikkans?

He caught himself and focused on the threat at hand, rather than inventing additional problems for the future.

“How many, Private Regurthin? And were they pursuing, or driving you off?”

“At least thirty, of various sizes, Sir. Possibly more; our torch wasn’t shedding much light. No, I didn’t see any in pursuit, and we tried to wedge the door to the chamber closed behind us, but there are bound to be some that are hungry. And their chamber was the only way onwards; the rest of the rooms we found were dead-ends.”

“All right, Private. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll build a barricade at that next corner to provide us with a haven to retreat behind if they venture this way. The doors to the rooms all seem to be made of stone, so they should provide enough material. Once that’s done, we’ll head out again to see whether there is any way to get around them.”

Regurthin’s arm was quickly bandaged, and the makeshift barricade constructed. Sergeant Darintini himself accompanied the next survey mission, along with the two soldiers who had brought bows. They tried to move quietly but, as soon as they eased open the door indicated by Loltin, he could hear a buzz and a smell of burning metal. He threw a burning cactus brand as far as he could into the room for light and quickly scanned to see what they were up against.

More than thirty. There must be nearly twice that. Bulky green monsters covered in thick, lumpy skin, lolling around in the sandy soil of the next chamber. He could see eggs as well, half-buried in the floor. They were always most vicious when defending their young. The cactus torch began to fade but it didn’t matter. As he watched, blue actinic light sprang up from more and more of the lizards. Azure tracery began to play across their skin as they turned to face him, their movements becoming still as they regarded the potential threat.

Spang. A bow sang as Loltin fired an arrow at one of the nearest creatures. It struck dead on, a credit to his training and his nerve, but simply bounced off with a dead crack as the arrow splintered against the leather-like hide.

His partner, clearly stung out of his paralysis by the sudden action followed suit, but with no better results. One of the lizards lunged towards them and Sergeant Darintini reacted immediately, blocking it with his short sword. There was a blue flash as the creature’s lightning grounded through the sergeant and he nearly dropped the sword. He staggered back and the two privates slammed and blocked the door once more.

Darintini returned his sword to its scabbard and tried to massage some life back into his numbed arm.

“Well, that could have gone better,” he admitted. “Let’s head back behind the barricade and regroup.”

A few hours later they tried again, and then a few hours after that, but with much the same results. They discovered that the wooden shafts of their pikes made a better melee weapon against the lizards since they didn’t seem directly susceptible to the lightning, but the blades themselves still skated across the lizards’ skin. They also discovered that the lightning wasn’t only a passive defence, the lizards could release it in a directed arc against a foe. Several of the soldiers ended up sporting new burns on their arms and faces before they fell back once more with no gains to celebrate.

The lizards were either unable or unwilling to breach their defences, however. The situation was a stalemate. But Darintini and his squad had only a couple of days’ worth of food and water.

***

“And have you heard?” said Master Kylarn. “Apparently, the group of Zaronian soldiers you transported the other day has gone missing?”

Master Logross paused for a moment and then continued eating his piece of bread. When he had finished chewing, he swallowed and forced himself to speak casually.

“How do you know that?” he asked. “And for that matter, how did you know I transported them?”

His lunch companion was a tall, willowy lady a little older that himself. The vague air she cultivated helped conceal that she was a rising star in the scrying facility and a firm friend of Logross.

“My supervisor received a request to check out the area where you had left them this morning. I looked at the paperwork attached, and your name, along with Leltopin’s was on the docket. Apparently, the squad is overdue and there has been no sign of them leaving the wasteland to approach the desert. I gather that the military instructors had been planning an ambush, so had been watching fairly closely for any sign of them.”

“That’s… regrettable,” said Logross slowly. “And were you able to help them out?”

“Sadly not. We don’t have anyone who knows the area who could provide us with a location fix and, when we applied to Leltopin for approval to send a team, she squashed the whole endeavour. I overheard her talking to the supervisor. ‘Not our problem’, she said. ‘What’s one squad of trainees more or less?’”

Logross carefully restrained his initial reaction to start ranting about all Zaronians being on the same side, and that this attitude pointed towards a major thing wrong with the Guild. It wasn’t as if Kylarn hadn’t heard it all before, after all, and he knew she shared some of his views. Best not to draw attention to himself in public if he wanted to do anything about this. He’d already stuck his neck out in front of Leltopin on the issue, and he wouldn’t put it past her to monitor him to ensure he didn’t blunder into whatever political game she was playing. Right now, he hadn’t been explicitly ordered not to get involved. Not exactly…

They finished their lunches largely in silence, and afterwards he wandered off to visit another friend. Senior Artisan Ekkatini was where he always was these days, firmly ensconced in his laboratory fiddling with some magical Device or other. They went back a long way, having served on the same vermin control team together as apprentices; Logross’s prodigious combat talent meant that he had been advanced to a team largely made up of his elders.

After a few casual remarks, he broached the topic he had been thinking about.

“Say, Ekki. Didn’t you once mention that it would be possible to trace the location of an emergency beacon without it having been activated? In theory, of course. Obviously, it would be a breach of privacy to use that sort of technique to track another Guild member.”

Ekkatini looked up to lock eyes with Logross for a moment, but whatever he saw there satisfied him.

“Yes, it should be possible if you knew the code for the emergency beacon. The way the code is engraved into the Device means that it would be susceptible to the same code being transmitted through a mana pulse. It would pulsate in harmony. Of course, you wouldn’t get much range, unless you rigged up a transmitter of some kind. A pulse emitted by a human mind might cover a range of half a mile, maybe less. Direction finding would be a little touch and go as well.”

“Interesting,” replied Logross. “The pulse you’d need to send out, that would be similar to a location ping, but more complex given the need to encode the beacon identifier, I assume?”

“That’s right,” said Ekkatini. “We use the same encoding on the emergency beacons as the one for the transport platforms. You’re already familiar with that, of course?”

It wasn’t a question. It was one of the first lessons that got drummed into new Masters mastering the transportation working. The transport platforms provided a known set of locations which could target the working in the absence of personal knowledge and also helped anchor and reduce the mana involved.

“Indeed,” replied Logross blankly. “So, effectively all I would need to do is pretend to be a transportation beacon myself, and send out a pulse and listen for some kind of echo? Theoretically, of course.”

“Theoretically, yes,” said Ekkatini. “That’s what some of the notes I’ve read conjecture might be possible, but I can’t say I know anyone that has ever tried it. I’d be very interested to hear the results if someone was ever to experiment with the technique.”

Logross nodded, and their conversation moved onto other topics. Apparently, Ekkatini was working on his Master’s thesis studying the construction of artificial shield generators and he appreciated Logross’s personal insight into the theory behind the workings.

Later that afternoon, Master Logross checked through his go bag: a set of useful tools and supplies that he always kept ready in case he was called away on an urgent combat mission. Having satisfied himself that everything was present and correct, he wandered down to the local transportation hub.

The Duty Master was one with whom he was vaguely familiar but no more. When questioned, he explained he was embarking on a brief personal research trip and he showed the chit that he’d received from the local archivist who had been fascinated by the idea of a long-abandoned archaeological investigation. Apparently, all the records of the site had been removed from the library several hundred years before as being ‘contrary to received wisdom’, whatever that meant.

Master Logross’s polished memory techniques meant that he clearly remembered the beacon code of the transport platform to which he’d sent Darintini and his team the previous day. He concentrated for a few minutes and the familiar comforting embrace of the transportation folded around him and deposited him somewhere else.

***

Master Logross found himself in the same jumble of red-rock outcrops as Darintini had the previous day. His first action was internal, as he directed a thought at his paired Glowling companion.

< So, Hoosma. On the road again. Are you ready to help once more? >

The reaction from the Glowling was immediate. A feeling of warmth and anticipation suffused Logross’s mind.

Glowlings were beings of pure energy and cognition. They emerged into Zaronia in certain crystalline caverns deep under the ground, and all such known sites were controlled by the Guild. For whatever reason, they invariably looked to bond with human minds and had much to offer their companions. Their ability to sense and manipulate mana was second-to-none, and conferred some of these abilities on their partners. Sadly, their abilities and development were curtailed by the Seals applied to every Guild member from apprenticeship, so Logross was lucky to have met and captured the interest of a mature and advanced entity. Together, they had found ways around some limitations of the Seals, although he couldn’t help feeling that it possessed many more abilities, untapped and untrained.

< Can you please give me a pulsed mana signal in this rhythm? > he continued, supplying the encoding for the emergency beacon code he’d seen on the label shown him by the Guard the previous afternoon.

Hoosma generated a stuttered mana pulse several times more powerful that Logross could have himself, despite his significant reserves, and he was pleased to hear a faint return, on the edge of his ability to sense. The technique worked then. Next, it would be a matter of triangulating and tracking down the location. And hoping that the sergeant hadn’t discarded the piece of crystal somewhere.

Logross was about to stride off in the direction of the echo, before his attention was caught by the nearby carvings on the rock face. He stopped and laboriously decoded the message.

The engravings were in an ancient form of Guild shorthand, and they proved to be a summary of the investigation sites that had been identified nearby. If he was reading it right, one of them was in the rough direction that he was heading.

He read on, puzzling out the details. Unlikely as it might seem, the ancient scholars had believed that these were the remains of some kind of pre-Zaronian civilisation from many thousands of years before. And there were indications that they had cast magic in a style related to the Zaronian Guild of Mages. The carved notes went into more detail than was usual for a field record, possibly because the archaeologists had suspected that their investigation was going to be suppressed on their return to the Guild.

He drew a breath, surprised. This certainly contradicted ‘received wisdom’. It qualified as a near-heretical suggestion, despite the atheistic stance of the Guild. Received wisdom, as had been circulated since the Guild was reformed a few hundred years before, held that magic was entirely the product of the Guild’s scholarship, although he’d come across a few hints and rumours that their Mages hadn’t always believed this. No wonder the investigation had been shut down and the records conveniently ‘lost’.

No matter what his current mission was, this felt like something that should be investigated in more detail. But for now, he had a squad of soldiers to locate… and rescue.

He surrounded himself with an inertia shield and walked roughly towards the earlier mana echo, but followed the directions to the entrance of the facility that had been discovered in that area. As he went, he opened his mouth and tasted the ambient mana. Far stronger than in most locations, this rivalled the mana levels found in Guild facilities carefully located to maximise the speed of recovery of the Guild members. That came with a downside, however. High ambient mana levels attracted magical creatures.

***

Half an hour later, Logross was left staring at a patch of ground, apparently no different from any other. A quick ping of the mana pulse confirmed that Darintini, or at least his pack, was several hundred yards away and somewhere underground, and a brief carving on a nearby stone confirmed that this was the entrance to the local compound.

“Time to get working, then,” he said to himself.

He created a pyramidal mana bubble and established the appropriate internal mana current for an air working, opening up one vertex of the pyramid to ensure a brisk flow of gas. He then angled it at the ground, watching the upper layer of dust, sandy and soil blow away.

“This is going to take some time,” he muttered, after a few minutes had passed with only a hole a few inches deep to show for his mental effort. He sat down on a nearby rock, playing the working back and forth. After a quarter of an hour he had exposed a wide, rectangular rock a yard or two to a side, which had been set into a hole carved in the bedrock.

Next he created another working, this one designed to lower the weight of the capstone rock and lowered it gently onto the upper surface. He then moved over and carefully lifted the stone into the air and placed it carefully back down to the side, being extremely careful not to chip or damage it. It was an ancient artefact, after all.

Once he had dismissed the other workings and created a light working in their place, he could make out a steep set of steps descending into the darkness.

Carefully, he descended into the tunnel below and walked slowly in the direction of the echo, listening carefully as he went. His first intimation of danger was when he came to a crossroad in the path and he saw a flickering red light from a side passage. Stepping forward down the tunnel, he carefully peered around a corner.

The hissing started immediately, and a long snake, nearly 10 feet from end to end, reared up to meet his curious gaze. The creature was wreathed in flame along the entire length of its body and, as he watched, it prepared to strike. It was a vizzinti fire snake.

Logross quickly established a heat shield between himself and the creature and watched it carefully.

“You’re a young one, aren’t you?” he crooned, seemingly unwilling to attack. “But do you have a mate, I wonder?”

A slight change in the shadows in his peripheral vision warned him in time, and he suddenly pressed himself into the corner and pulled his heat shield in tightly. Another similar creature had quietly approached behind him while his attention had been caught. It must have been lurking down one of the other tunnels.

In concert, the two tried to strike him repeatedly and he could feel the pressure and a faint warmth through his double shield. It would be wise to end this quickly, but he was loath to simply kill them, having a soft spot for the breed.

He’d have preferred to wait until they simply got frustrated and left, but it was clear his shields would not hold out indefinitely. Ever since his master had introduced him to them, he had been peculiarly proficient with the workings, but they could only do so much. One of his longer-term goals was to find some way to improve them to achieve greater impermeability.

Instead, he created a major cold working, and slowly moved it toward them. As soon as it got close, they froze briefly, and then began to back away, eyes locked on the glowing blue ball of mana. A brief dart forward with the ball, and their nerves broke. They turned and slithered away as far as they could go, disappearing into a crack in the passage wall.

Shaking his head, Logross walked back to the junction in the passages and picked the option which corresponded most closely to Darintini’s location. He soon emerged into a room where the walls had been covered in carving.

He examined them curiously, pulling his light working in sideways so the shadows illuminated the shapes better. The writing meant nothing to him. It was in no alphabet that he recognised, but he paused for several minutes, fascinated by the inscriptions. It had been some kind of instructional diagram, or possibly a record and, if he wasn’t mistaken, it related in some way to the shield magic he’d been thinking about only a few minutes earlier. Some diagrams reminded him of the details of the workings that he used.

He could feel Hoosma paying particular attention as the working sparked some ideas or inspiration in its mind.

This would reward further study and a closer investigation but, he reluctantly remembered, the priority was to rescue the soldiers.

He moved to the door on the far side of the chamber and then paused, some faint noise or instinct warning him to be cautious. Next, he paused and sniffed carefully. There was a slightly unusual smell to the air, like that which sometimes followed a lightning storm. Or a lightning working…

Hmmm. Down here, amongst the possible options, it was most likely that he’d encounter lightning lizards. He’d never cared for them, and they tended to be mindlessly aggressive, reluctant to retreat even when confronted by an overwhelming force.

He made his preparations carefully, establishing a lightning shield around his whole body and a series of small, sharp, shield workings in a triangular shape which reminded him faintly of arrow heads. He’d practised this technique before and with Hoosma’s help could handily wield a dozen simultaneously.

Ready for combat, he kicked open the door and strode into the next cavern, a host of the virtual shield-blades floating behind his head.

***

The first that Darintini knew of their relief was when the man he’d stationed at the barricade ran back into the room, shouting about noises. Prolonged lightning and animal noises. Perhaps the lizards had finally worked out how to get through the blocked door?

Aside from their casualty, Bax, who had lapsed into unconsciousness sometime before, he and the rest of the men clambered wearily to their feet and prepared to put up a last defence. They’d spent many hours down here at this point. He’d lost any sense of the actual time, but judging by the vent in the ceiling, it was dark outside again now. They all crowded out to stand behind the barricade, fatalistic about their chances, but prepared to make their final stand.

Everything was quiet once more. Then suddenly, there was a huge crashing sound, and the blocked door burst open in a shower of fragments and dust.

Another pause.

And then a single figure of a man strode into the corridor and turned to face them.

“Ah. Sergeant Darintini wasn’t it? Could I be of some assistance?”

The Guild Mage, Logross, was faintly amused by their reception as Darintini briefed him on what had happened, but grew more serious when he examined Bax.

“This is a nasty break and I think it may have become infected. I’ll do what I can to stabilise it, but we ought to get him to better trained attention as quickly as possible. Could you make a stretcher out of your pikes? His weight won’t be a problem.”

He then spent some time concentrating over the body and, indeed, when they tried to lift him he felt as light as if he were nothing more than a paper construct such as was occasionally used in morality entertainments.

Logross then led the way out of the maze of underground passages, assuring them they had nothing further to worry about.

The room with the lizards was… horrendous. No sign remained of the vast horde of monsters beyond a diced mass of flesh and viscera. It was as if some sort of army of mad butchers had swept through the room, turning the lizards into nothing more than a hideous raw banquet. Logross offered no explanation and, shuddering to keep control of his stomach, Darintini asked no questions.

He did note that the Mage somehow kept his robes and feet spotlessly clean, despite the gore through which he and the other soldiers had to wade. The sensations that they had to endure, feeling the lizard blood coated by blowing sand and dust across their lower legs were… indescribable.

The journey back to the transport platform went quickly enough - far more so than on the outwards journey, guided as they were by Logross’s confident silent figure always striding away in the lead.

When they finally reached the ringed stone platform where their ordeal had started, Darintini called for a break while his men recovered from the journey back. In that interval, he braced himself to exchange a few words with the man who had rescued them all.

“Master Logross. I just wanted to say how grateful I am for you risking yourself to pull us out of there. If there’s anything you need from me, or any of us, you have only to ask.”

“No thanks are needed, Sergeant. I sent you here; it was right for me to be the one to extract you when you ran into your… troubles.”

Despite his words, the Mage looked gratified, and maybe a little embarrassed, at what were clearly Darantini’s heart-felt thanks.

“I just don’t know how it all turned so wrong, so quickly,” Darintini went on. “We tried again and again to break through the lizards, but got driven back every time. With hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have led my squad down after Bax.”

“You mustn’t think like that,” responded Logross firmly. “You couldn’t have known that the lizards would be there, and I believe you did all you could to overcome them. They were just too powerful for you on this occasion. It would have been far, far worse for you to abandon someone placed under your command, for whom you felt responsible or to whom you were loyal, without doing all you could to rescue them.”

Darintini gazed into Logross’s eyes for a moment before looking away, unable to deal with the absolute certainty and resolve that he saw there. He was to remember that message for a long time.

And then the moment was over, and Logross transported them back to the training camp and the inevitable debrief.

***

A month later, Logross was back in the underground complex, carefully examining the walls of the complex armed with a sheaf of blank paper and various writing implements. Nothing he found was going to directly apply to Zaronian magic - the unknown race of ancients had clearly had different techniques which involved painting themselves with mana. However, he was confident that the concepts he was puzzling out would prove immensely valuable, let alone the insights that were triggered in reaction from Hoosma.

Logross was confident that he would improve significantly with his shield techniques with what he was learning. In time, it might even lead him further towards that rumoured pinnacle of the art: a shield which could bar mana itself.

He had faced no direct disciplinary action from Leltopin after his rescue of the Zaronian soldiers. What could she do after all? He was a master, if a junior one. He’d noticed a definite souring of her attitude towards him and a certain continuing frustration with his objections, but that was all to the good since he didn’t like either her methods or her apparent goals. Recently, he’d found some potential allies amongst those who had approached him to congratulate him on his actions. Maybe there were some decent people in the Guild after all.

As far as he’d heard, the incident had done nothing to harm the career of the army sergeant either. He, himself, had given evidence that there was little that he and his men could have done to overcome the threat posed by the lizards, and his superiors had been impressed that he’d been prepared to risk his life in pursuit of one lost man. As they should be. It was important to live by and risk yourself for your principles, after all.

He paused in response to another stray thought from Hoosma.

< No. I don’t think we’ll find any more lizards down here to play with. >

< {Sadness/disappointment/hope} >

***

This story is set around five to ten years before the beginning of Starting Sphere.

In ‘Projecting Pyramid’, Captain Darintini had mentioned that he had met, and been favourably impressed by, Master Logross, and I wanted to find out how that encounter had played out… The resulting story reveals a little more of what’s going on behind the silent facade that confronts Scordo when he interacts with his Master.

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