Metal and Flesh (The Rohvim, Book 1)

21.2 All On Time

The master healer, Betha, Darla, Frederick, Edwin, and Gregory opened the large front door of the stronghold. Inside they saw a row of soldiers seated on each side of the great hall they now entered into, and without a noise they all stood and approached the intruders, drawing their swords.

   The six leaped into action, successively parrying and blocking and shocking the two rows of soldiers. Each society member, with one or two strokes managed to shock the sword out of each drone's hand, and reaching out to touch their heads, entered and quickly disposed of the copy of Shiavo that controlled each. In thirty seconds or so, the six of the company dropped about twenty men and women, each falling harmlessly to the ground, though Darla's final freed victim bashed his head against the stone wall as he fell, leave a dripping red gash.

   "Ooo, that's going to hurt when he wakes up ... Sorry!" she said, walking over to the others now assembled in the center of the hall. The great room was lined with doors and hallways leading off to the right, left, and straight ahead. They searched the rooms, seeing them to be either barracks, larders and pantries, or other storage rooms, some stocked with hundreds, possibly thousands of rough looking swords and cheap pieces of armor.

   They then searched the hallways. The corridors on the right side of the great hall were lined with rooms similar to those lining the great hall itself. The hallways on the left were a different matter entirely. In several of the rooms sitting on the filthy floor sat dozens of people, chained to the wall, staring around themselves with blank looks. The company entered the first room and the master healer laid his hand on one of them.

   "This is Lady Markham, of Elbeth." He looked up and said, "These people are all from Elbeth. We have no time for them right now ..." And he left the room with the others, confirming that the remainder of the rooms in the hallway were similarly stocked with prisoners.

   They returned to the main hall and approached the hallway opposite the front entrance. They entered the first room and stopped. They stared at the table in the center of the room. A man was fastened to it, leather straps tying down his legs, torso, arms and head. He was twitching, shaking, moaning, struggling to get out of bondage. The master healer strode across the room and looked the man in the eyes. "Are you alright?" The man did not reply, did not even look the master healer in the eye or acknowledge his presence in any way, but continued his moaning and shaking. The master placed his hands on his head. A minute passed, and the others looked at each other in alarm since, accounting for the difference in time perception when in another's mind, the master healer would have marked that an hour or more had passed. Betha and Gregory entered as well. Once inside, they shielded their eyes, for all around them the scenery constantly flipped from one image to the next, often confluences of several scenes meshed together, often bright and at other times dark, but always changing and flickering.

   They approached the master healer who stood before the man's wall, specifically at the portion that held the central source instructions for the man's mind. The master healer murmured, Shiavo has been busy. Look. They looked at some of the screens scattered about this section of wall, staring at the indecipherable writing displayed on them. Many of them had sections of writing that were highlighted with red light, some of them flashing, displaying red text that was foreign to all present. The master healer went on, He's been tampering with his central source instructions. Irreparable harm has been done to this man. He will never recover. He placed his hand on one of the screens, saying aloud, I don't dare try to fix him. What greater evil will I inflict upon him? I don't even know where to start.

   They stared in silence at the flashing red lights, before Gregory said, Let's go. We have a mission to complete. They exited the mind and left the room.

   The master healer spoke again, "Lord Shiavo must be bringing prisoners here to experiment upon, to try to learn how to successfully manipulate and change our source instructions. This is ... worthy of disgust." The man said, in a tone of understatement.

   They searched the other rooms, finding similar situations in each. In one, the woman in bondage was drooling, her eyes red, her mouth hanging open. In another, a man strapped to a table repeated, "All on time all on time all on time all on time all time all on time all on time all on time all on time all ..." In another, a woman screamed when she saw them, continuing hysterically until they left the room. Finally, they came to the end of the hallway, from which some stairs led upwards to the second floor. "Perhaps our companions have had better luck ..." murmured the master as they ascended.