(Continued from Ch 42, Cast At Last)

The Chronicles of Rapina
Chapter 43, Shadowland


Winter passed rapidly, and Thane's hopes were realized when Avengene could not spare the troops to prey on the temples of Mortaebius during the winter. Beyond consolidating power within his own territory, Avengene had his hands full trying to guard and rebuild his demolished forts, a task that could not easily be done in the winter because of the characteristics of mortar in cold weather.

The seasons on the desert mountain top ranged from almost cool, to quite warm, though not nearly so unbearably hot as was the case far below in the desert proper. In early spring, the abode was still quite comfortable, and during one particular night, Thane took his servitors down to the base of the mountain to the valley of the ghouls. With him he took Elizabetta and a sizable force of reaving and double-animated skeletons. Oddly, two of Thane's best reavers were unarmed and unarmored. The temperature in the desert warred between a cool wind and a sand-strewn pave that still gave off waves of warmth. Moonlight illuminated the valley.

"I brought you down here to familiarize you with the plain of shadow. Ordinarily I would have done it in the outdoor area of the abode, but now that we have the new wards, plain-shifting of any kind is difficult and requires the use of the ward keys. These are complex magical methods for entering our particular wards. I have grown adept at using the keys while casting graveyard mists, but I am new at plain-shifting. I cast graveyard mists so many times during the building of the abode that I can practically cast it in my sleep. Thus adding the ward-key operation into the spell was not so difficult.

Outside the wards, Elizabetta and I have been working on this plain shift off and on so that it is now reliable, and I have already started on a one handed version. As you see I am wearing a black hooded cape in addition to my black robes. Although it is uncomfortably warm to wear it here, it has utility when there is not a border between a deep shadow and a brighter one. With the cape I can cast a large shadow and create a borderland." Thane handed Elizabetta a dagger and Rames an ancient sword. "It is possible to take objects with you, but they must be within six inches to one foot of your person. Skeletons have even less latitude, for they lack a living aura. Thus I have brought the two unarmed and unarmored reavers, and Elizabetta.

"The sword and dagger I just handed out are enchanted weapons bought at great expense. It took me quite sometime to locate affordable weapons that would suffice. In order for a blade to function as a blade where we are going, it must be either highly magical, or less strongly magical with an alloy to which shadow essence has been added. When I replaced my singing bones after narrowly defeating Uler, I bartered some advanced animations to a colleague so that my new bones could sport enchanted spike blades containing shadow essence."

"We are about to enter the plain of shadow. Rames, you will be the first in. It is your job to establish a beachhead. The plain is mostly deserted, but there are some rather dangerous shades and other monsters that live there. Undead shadows are fairly common in the plain of shadow but we can command them using the power of Mortaebius as always. The last semantic gesture of this spell is something on the order of a mimed push. When you see this gesture, Thane demonstrated, you must take a step backward. Now stand right here, Rames. You see that the hill behind you casts a deep shadow in the moonlight and that this is the line it draws," Thane pointed. "I want you standing just inside the moonlight so that one step backwards will put you fully in the deeper shadow. Good. Draw your blade now and take a step back as I complete the spell. As others join Rames you shall grab hold of him, and Rames, as the skeletons arrive you will need to order them to grab hold of you."

Rapina watched Thane's casting with interest. She wondered if she would ever seem so competent. She smiled, at least she now knew she could cast. After her first successful spell, she had taken to hunting up and copying down any sort of minor cantrip she could find in the library, or beg from Thane when she was not trying to figure out variations of her life-drain spell. She failed miserably at many of the minor magics in her growing collection, but she could actually do some, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before more of them fell before the onslaught of her learning. Startled out of her reverie, Rapina opened her mouth as Thane completed his spell and Rames stepped back and disappeared.

"Elizabetta, prepare yourself as did Rames. You will be next. Naked reavers stand here and here. When I cast the spell on you, you will step back with the last gesture as you see Elizabetta will soon be doing," Thane said.

The spell took perhaps fifteen seconds to cast, but had to be cast on each person separately. Soon both the reavers had disappeared and Rapina had taken up a position just in front of the border of shadow.

"Good, you will allow the others to protect you, my dear," Thane said. "Your unarmed combat techniques will be usable in an emergency, but I have not yet been able to locate an appropriate magical weapon for you to use."

As Thane finished the last gesture, Rapina stepped backward. She felt different, yet she could still see Thane standing in the light. Rapina heard an oddly muffled, insubstantial voice.

"Welcome to the realm of shadow, Rapina," Rames said.

Rapina could see the real world fine, but her compatriots within the plain of shadow were indistinct like phantoms. She reached and found Rames left wrist. Had he been more than a yard from her, she would never have found him. He seemed more like a field of energy than a solid person. Perhaps she was wrong, but it felt almost as though, if she squeezed hard enough, her fingers would pass through his wrist. Before she was fully oriented, She saw Thane disappear from the real world and appear as a shadow next to her.

"Good, now I will cast a spell of telekinesis in case I need to grab one of you on short notice." Thane's voiced droned a bit as he cast. "In the realm of shadow, you are little more than a phantom. Thane cast a spell on Rames that caused him to glow with blue light. The main problem with the plain of shadow is visibility. We can see the real world quite well, but we cannot normally see each other well, and those in the real world cannot see us save in the best lighting conditions. You see I am walking around you, but I am nothing more than a shadow. In truth I move because I am so used to associating movement with the action of walking that my belief propels me. Here it is the power of your mind that gives you motive force. This is a great blessing for traversing long distances because a shadow can move at far greater speeds than a corporeal man.

There are dangers, however. For the purposes of this training exercise I have cast a minor blue light spell on Rames so you can see him at a greater distance, but this also would make him visible to corporeal people. Some magical weapons could hit him; strong light spells cast against him would wound him and make him plainly visible. A spell or item that cancels magic, if properly targeted, would displace him back to the material plain, and mind influencing spells would have their full effect on him.

I will cast blue light on each of us so that we can safely practice movement. Normally I would be a fool to cast light on anyone. My vision in darkness spell would work for locating living people, but would be of little help for seeing our undead servitors. Monsters from the plain of shadow tend to attack illuminated individuals in preference to others, and those on the material plain can see and attack an illuminated shadow-walker. Thane cast blue light on all of his servitors in turn, and then on himself. "Now you will be able to see one another for some distance. Most skeletons can only use their normal walking and running modes of movement here. Advanced animations seem to have enough will to speed these somewhat. Being a creature of shadow, however, the skeletal assassin can travel in this plain as fast as many human beings. Here it does not matter how physically fit you are. The power of your mind determines your speed, thus an ancient wizened mage with a powerful mind can run circles around a young, athletic warrior.

The purpose of our exercise tonight will be to familiarize you with movement in the plain of shadow. For now you shall stay within this valley. Elizabetta, the reavers and I will stand in the middle of the valley. Rapina, Rames, you will stay in the valley and you will run around us perfecting your ability to move. Before you begin let me caution you, avoid entering solid objects. You will find some objects more difficult to enter than others. The more holes and porosity in an object, the easier it will be to seep into it. Within an object you can see nothing, and your sense of direction can easily become confused. If you stop within an object you could drift down into the ground where it is difficult to determine the force of gravity and you may seep down into the dirt and entomb yourself."

"There is only one time you should ever enter an object, and that time is when you are trapped in the shadow plain at dawn. Direct sunlight will burn you up. It is quite deadly. If you are caught in the plain of shadow your ideal location is within as shaded an area as possible, and within an object that stands alone so that the danger of you heading into the ground is minimized. In underground catacombs you can stay in shadowy rooms and such. This is the ideal, for you will not be likely to drift into the ground and loose your bearings."

"Now you must practice movement. I have read several conflicting recommendations. Some practitioners recommend that you not allow human beings to use walking or running since it will hamper them in attaining maximum speeds. Others recommend that warriors run and mages glide. I will let you experiment as you see fit, however I have found that I can move much faster without moving my feet. Will is the thing here, clomping and stomping are unnecessary distractions."

Rapina tried simply willing herself into motion, but she didn't budge. Next she tried running. It worked but it was not much faster than it would have been had she been in material form. Rames seemed to be having similar problems. Rapina smiled. She remembered sliding around on the frozen lake in the valley of the dead on Graveston isle. Perhaps that was just the transition she needed. She ran over a small rise of sand and then just made as though she were going to slide. Her strategy worked; she slid for quite a distance, much farther than she would have been able to slide on the sandy pave of the desert valley had she been a material being. After that she managed to extend her slide into a very long glide. Rames seemed to be trying to run and jump. Perhaps he thought he should think like a bird. Whatever he was doing didn't seem to be working for him.

Rames did have a point, however; Rapina was thinking of the ground as solid, and her body as heavy. It was two-dimensional thought. She knew she would need to amend her thinking, but for the first hour she practiced gliding. She went from a slide, to a long slippery glide to what she thought of as a power glide. It was a never-ending glide like a skier on an infinite slope. After a bit of practice she could 'ski' uphill as well as down.

Thane chuckled, Rames was running and jumping gradually longer distances, and Rapina seemed to be skiing. Her ghostly giggles filled the air as she became more and more adept. Thane had long known his apprentice had an exceptional mind, but now he had the opportunity to see a more concrete measure of its power. As the young woman gained skill, she gained speed and soon she was little more than a laughing blue streak, traversing the length of the valley in an eyeblink, banking off the valley walls and zipping around the rim, like a metal ball shot from a miniature ballistae rolling around in an irregular bowl.

After she was confident doing her high speed sliding technique, Rapina decided she would try passing through some objects. Thane's material armored skeletons were the perfect subjects. At first she kind of hugged them to no avail.

Thane raised an eyebrow as Rapina attempted to occupy the same space as one of his corporeal guards. Metals were difficult to seep through, but armor often had many holes in it and it was thin, so given time she might manage it. Once inside she might be able to see out, which was good because it would keep her from becoming disoriented. Gravity had an infinitesimal effect on shadows, but it was a subtle thing like the effect of gravity on a wisp of down, and being inside an object tended to make it less obvious.

After a while Rapina learned to adjust her thinking so that she could seep slowly into a solid object. She decided that she would not practice it too much, because then she might sink through the earth and her sliding technique would be lost to her. That would be a horrible thing since power sliding was more fun than skiing and skating put together.

After she was confident she could enter solid objects if there was a need for it, Rapina decided she needed to try to learn to fly. Rames was already making some amazingly long jumps, and Rapina saw the utility of having that ability. After all, what if she was gliding along and came to a cliff? The lesson ended sometime after Rapina had mastered what she called power-jumping. Rames had settled on a technique Rapina called giant-stepping. It was half running, half flying and worked pretty well for the warrior-priest.

When they were finished with their practice, Thane gathered them together. The cancellation of the spell took Thane only a second. Each person treated with the cancellation faded back into material being in a second or two.
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This ends, Shadow Land, chapter 43 of The Chronicles of Rapina.
The story continues in chapter 44, The Best Laid Plans.

Copyright 2001 by Rapina