Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

“Go, Red,” Fehn groaned.

Tayel squeezed Jace’s shoulder and took off. She had to stop Shy. They needed to leave, while they still could. While Ruxbane was running from them instead of the other way around.

Her legs wobbled, but she made it down the rubble, her heart racing as Shy sprinted up the steps. Tayel panted running to her weapon. Her lungs refused to expand, and every gulp of air only gave her some relief. A flash of white fur pulled her sight rightward in time to see Balcruf stumbling out from behind a still intact workstation, but she didn’t have the breath to cry out. She didn’t even have the energy to feel relief at his safety. He shuffled toward the steps after Shy, crossbow barely lifted in his arms, and Tayel came to a stop above her baton.

She needed to breathe. She hung over her legs — just for a moment. One breath. Two breath. Balcruf’s heavy footsteps plodded up the stairs. Tayel grabbed the mag baton, gritting her teeth at its weight. She ran after him and after Shy, her throat turning raw as she battled to keep enough air in her lungs. She trudged up the steps, each one a mountain, and stumbled through the doorway.

It led to what she could only guess was a flight control deck — the true center of the mothership. The walls were lined in screens, though a huge one dominated the center back wall. Shy and Balcruf stood unharmed in front of a translucent purple shield stretched all the way across the room from floor to ceiling, separating them from the controls and Ruxbane on the other side. He hunched over one of the workstations.

“What happened?” Tayel asked.

“He got to the controls before I could catch him,” Shy said. Her nostrils flared. “Any ideas?”

Balcruf fired an icy bolt at the purple wall. It pinged off on impact, sending a flurry of lavender ripples through the shield.

Tayel shook her head. “No. But we should go.”

“I’d advise against that,” Ruxbane growled.

He limped to the barrier. The wavering darkness still lingered like floating, ethereal leeches across his arms and head, and wherever they rose from, his injuries began to vanish. Blood stopped oozing from the gash on his hairline, both ends of it knitting together toward the center to close. The dark aether was healing him.

“An offer for you, Tayel,” he said. “You come with me, and I won’t crash this ship into the city below, killing everyone left.”

Tayel bit the inside of her cheek, stopping the instinct to grin. It had been the intention all along to destroy the ship once the Varg were freed and the data collected. If the other, larger group from Kalanie succeeded in their escapade, then magi waited below ready to prevent the destruction Ruxbane promised. Balcruf watched her, his grave side glance a warning not to blow their plan.

She cleared her throat. “What do you want with me?”

“What does it matter?” Shy asked. “You’re not going with him.”

“Maybe this would be a better conversation away from the princess of the raiders who invaded your homeworld,” Ruxbane said.

Tayel glared. “Invaded only because you made them.”

“With that sick mind control xite we saw in Castle Aishan,” Shy spat. “And you’re doing it to hopeless refugees, too.”

Ruxbane’s eyebrows shot up in surprise he quickly stifled. “I don’t intend to do that to you. I won’t harm you.”

Tayel stood taller. “It’s hard to believe that, considering all the harm you’ve caused in the last few weeks.”

“You Rokkir have abducted hundreds of thousands of my people,” Balcruf barked.

“And killed hundreds of thousands more,” Tayel added.

Ruxbane winced. “Deaths are an unfortunate necessity.”

“A necessity for what? What are you trying to do that’s so important you’ve basically destroyed an entire system?”

“Please, Tayel. I need you. You could save lives. More will die if you don’t come and you could help us — you could help me . I’m dying.”

Shy snorted. “Good.”

“I could be free of this” -Ruxbane gripped his head, teeth bared — “You have a gene — in your DNA — that I need. It will cure an ailment of my people and it will save billions in the years to come.”

Tayel crossed her arms, not in defiance, but to stifle the growing discomfort in her chest, or maybe in her conscience. Billions of people. Billions of which people? Of Rokkir? She’d save them so they could continue to raid the Igador System, maybe more? Balcruf eyed her sternly, like he was searching her for something.

“I can’t,” she stammered.

“Please,” Ruxbane begged. “After all this, I—please.”

Her guilt boiled over into anger. “I said I’m not going!” she snapped.

Ruxbane squeezed his head until she was sure he was going to crack his own skull. He swung his arm down and turned on his heel, shoulders stiff as he marched to the dashboard at the back of the room. The blank screen above him flickered to life.

It showed a view of a stark white room filled with endless columns and rows of glass tubes. Unconscious Varg floated inside them, and outside, the Varg who had gone in search of their stolen kin tried to rip the glass open.

Balcruf howled. He fired a pointless bolt at the shield. He leapt at it next, swiping at the purple ripples with his bladed crossbow even as every blow slid off.

He snapped his head toward Tayel. “ Do something.”

She froze. He wanted her to offer herself up. It was the only thing she could do, but she couldn’t — wouldn’t. It was unthinkable.

At the base of the containment tubes onscreen, previously white nodes turned a purple-black hue like the dark aether itself. The captured Varg slipped downward, falling into portals which formed inside the glass. They all vanished. All of them. In an instant.

Balcruf’s howl faded into a whine. He backed away from the barrier. The crossbow clattered to the floor, and then he to his knees.

Shy gasped. “Oh, xite.”

“What did you do, Ruxbane?” Tayel asked.

Most of the Varg outside the tubes in the video gave up as Balcruf had, but one pounded a now empty tube with silent, frantic desperation — even faster, more flurried than before.

Ruxbane cut the feed. “I’ve transported them.”

“Where?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer. The dashboard beeped and whined as he input commands she couldn’t see. He pressed one final button before turning, and the ground shuddered. Distant sirens echoed up the stairs behind her. The floor rattled again, and she widened her stance for balance. Ruxbane opened a dark portal beside him.

“Whatever you’re doing here on Modnik — to all of Igador — it’s wrong!” Tayel yelled. “You only care about your own life, and you’ve just ruined so many more.”

He glared at her.

The ground tremored again — harder this time — and Tayel caught herself against Shy. Sirens rose all around her, grating against her eardrums. Her stomach did a flip like she was falling.

“I do hope enough of you survives this crash to scrape into a test tube,” Ruxbane snapped, and he stepped through the portal. It closed instantly behind him.

Tayel grit her teeth, her retort stuck in her throat. No point yelling insults meant for the Rokkir now.

Shy grabbed her wrist. “We need to go!”

“I — I know. What about Balcruf?”

“If he wants to die crying, let him.”

Shy pushed her forward. Tayel stumbled into a run without sparing the control room another glance, but even so, the image of a world’s worth of Varg vanishing through the bottom of glass tubes refused to leave her head.