The Mantis Corruption - Book Three - 18. Chapter 18 - Confrontation

In the darkness of the night, Tisa walked beside Lahari. They headed away from the hidden hideout of the Biological Shift vigilantes, and the two of them made their way into Gate Town toward Shifton.

“I, for one, am in favor,” Lahari said.

“This is what I was made for,” Tisa replied, “stopping bad people and protecting my own kind.”

“I think one or two of the others in the group still need convincing,” Lahari stated. “They are resistant to adding new members, and I’ll be honest, none of us has even considered adding someone who isn’t a Bio-Shift. Tualu surprised us by bringing you tonight.”

“I may not be Bio-Shift, but I have just as much hatred for those who kill us, as all of you do.” Tisa then asked, “Can I talk to you about the way you look?”

Lahari gave her a sideways glance with her yellow eyes and answered in a hesitant tone. “I guess so. Never been around Bio-Shifts?”

Tisa stopped walking.

Lahari paused and turned. “What is it?” she asked.

A sob choked Tisa, and she brought her hands to her face. “Liovia,” she managed to say through her shuddering breaths, “I was friends with…” but her voice fell, and Tisa cried.

It took a moment for her to catch her breath and calm down enough to explain. “I used to live with a woman who the locals called a witch. Her skin was not like other peoples’, and she had wings, but she couldn’t fly.”

Lahari waited for Tisa to say more, but she remained silent, and Lahari quietly asked, “You used to live with a Bio-Shift?”

Tisa nodded. “I think so. We didn’t have terms for what we are.” Her voice broke again as she said, “I mean, what Liovia was. I don’t know why she looked so different, but I did know that we were the same, even though I look like a human. For more than half my life, I lived with her in the forest near the village where I was born, but the villagers… the villagers…” Tisa’s voice failed her again.

“They killed her, didn’t they?” Lahari said gently.

Tisa nodded again as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. She cuffed her eyes with her shirtsleeve and sniffed hard.

“I’m so sorry,” Lahari replied in a gentle tone. “We’re nearly there,” she added. “It’s just around this corner.”

A moment later, the two of them were at her house.

“This is where I live with my dads,” Lahari said, as she opened the front door. She stepped back for Tisa to enter and called out, “Hi, dads!”

Quite a few people were already in the small interior of their home.

“Lahari!” Theolan replied in delight, but Harakin let out a bloodcurdling scream and leapt up from her seat.

Sumi was beside her and slipped from her chair to the floor.

Ninyani and Tchama both jumped and he wrapped his little arms around her.

“Oh, no, no, no!” the mystic quickly interjected with a friendly chuckle. “Harakin, that’s Lahari. She’s my daughter. We told you about her.”

“You!” Harakin shrieked. Flashes of light materialized in the air, and her devastating blades flew through the crowded room toward the two women entering the house.

Auntie Peg and Dotty Marbles grabbed Ilya and Dozi, and the queens pulled them back from the line of fire.

“What the…” Lahari started to say, but Tisa’s powers reacted by reflex.

A void disc appeared in a flash of darkness and a serpentine creature protruded from it. Tentacles extended from its body, and each of Harakin’s daggers of light was snatched and disappeared into Tisa’s shadow opening.

“No!” Harakin raged.

Sumi yelled Harakin’s name and jumped up from the floor. “What are you doing?!” she screamed, as Sumi launched a barrage of solidified light beams at Tisa.

A massive hole opened in the space between them and it manifested a bushy plant of blackness that absorbed the light.

“What is happening?!” the mystic yelled to the room at large.

“Please, stop this!” Ninyani cried.

“Lahari, are you consuming these energies?” her father asked.

Theolan held his husband close and added, “What is going on here?”

“I’ll kill you!” Harakin wailed at Tisa, and she put every ounce of her energy into her assault.

Another void of darkness appeared, but Sumi cried, “Stop!” and she opened one of her doorways between Tisa and Harakin.

In an instant, everything ceased.

The light was gone.

The shadows were gone.

Sumi’s doorway was gone.

“Harakin, what’s wrong?!” Sumi asked, grabbing her hands. “Why are you attacking them?”

“That woman!” Harakin paused and stared at Tisa. “That’s… that’s…” she stuttered.

“Who is that? Do you know her?” Sumi asked. “I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

Harakin’s eyes were locked on Tisa’s and she spoke in a frightened voice. “I thought… I thought she was one of the medics from the compound.”

“She’s not,” Sumi assured Harakin emphatically. “Look at her! We’ve never seen her before! She is not whoever you think she is.”

“You’re safe here with all of us!” Ilya said, trying to reassure Harakin.

Sumi turned and stared at Tisa. “How did you do that?”

Tisa looked at Lahari.

Lahari cleared her throat and said in a very clear tone, “This is Tisa. She’s a Shift, and a new friend.”

Even after the chaos, Tisa felt the word friend deep in her soul.

Then Sumi interrupted in a hushed tone. “What are you?” She looked astonished.

Lahari turned to her father.

“This is my daughter,” the mystic declared, “We were telling you about her. Her name is Lahari.” He stepped up and embraced her.

She said to him, “It’s crowded in here.”

The mystic, Theolan, Tchama, Dozi, Ilya, Sumi, Auntie Peg, Dotty Marbles, and Ninyani were all relieved that the violence was at an end, and they made room for the other two arrivals. Introductions were made with everyone, and the group started chatting.

Harakin tentatively sidled toward Tisa. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t… I wasn’t…” She was uncertain what to say. “I thought you… I don’t know… it’s not…”

“Hey,” Tisa said calmly, “it’s okay. I don’t know who you thought I was, but it couldn’t have been me.”

“No,” Harakin confirmed in a tone that sounded more miserable with every word, “you’re not who I was afraid you were. I’m… I’m sorry,” she concluded, on the verge of tears.

Tisa reached out and took her hand to the teenager. “We are like one another, you and I. You’re like me, and I’m like you. We’re Shifts, and in my time in Teshon City, I’ve learned that Shifts protect their own kind. Me and you, we’re on the same side.”

Theolan stood. “Well, I need a cuppa. Who else wants one?” He headed into the kitchen and set the kettle to boil.

His husband stepped up to Tisa, and Harakin headed over to Sumi with an embarrassed frown on her face. The two of them started whispering together.

The mystic gave Tisa a curious look and asked, “What were those things?”

“I can make shadows,” she said, and she conjured a disc that was like a hole punched out of reality, and one of her small helper forms rose from it and waved.

“It’s so cute!” Ninyani squealed with delight.

He reached out to touch it, and the little round shadow creature jumped from the disc and landed on his wrist. It ran up Ninyani’s arm to his shoulder and he giggled with delight. The thing hopped over his head, ran down his opposite arm, then leapt back into the disk and disappeared.

Ninyani was beaming, and Tisa could not help but smile.

“Anyone else feeling as lucky as I am?” the mystic asked everyone. “Three new friends all in one day, wow!” He beamed at the group. “So, Tisa, you said you’re not from Teshon City originally. Did you grow up in one of the nearby villages?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no I didn’t. I’m from Xin, the lands to the far south, a town called Kestapoli.”

The mystic looked astonished. “Really? How is it possible that we made three new friends in a single day, and each of you is from a place that none of us have ever heard of before? What are the chances?” he mused.

Tisa turned to Harakin and Sumi in amazement. “You’re from Xin, too?”

“That’s where the compound is,” Sumi confirmed.

“How did you two get here? It took my partner and I something like two and a half months of hiking through the mountains to make it all the way to this region.”

Sumi looked at Dozi and Ilya, and she replied, “We needed a safe place. I opened a doorway and it led us into their home. They helped Harakin with her neck injury, fed us, and then brought us here this morning so he could treat her.” Sumi nodded to the mystic.

“That’s fresh?” Tisa asked Harakin, and she placed her hand on her own neck, indicating Harakin’s bandage. “Are you okay?”

Harakin looked sheepish. “I’m alright,” she replied quietly. “I’m… I’m sorry,” she said again in a whisper.

“It’s okay,” Tisa reassured her. “You don’t need to worry anymore. Can you tell me, why did you two leave Xin?”

Sumi and Harakin made eye contact, but Dozi spoke up and said, “They were prisoners, and they were made to do terrible things.”

“And they don’t ever have to go back,” added Ilya.

“That’s right!” Theolan concurred. “Incidentally,” he added turning to Tisa, “what made you leave?”

She looked at the group and asked, “Are you familiar with the monsters of Gunge?”

Not a single one of them knew what Tisa was talking about.

“There’s a region in the northeast of Xin,” she informed them, “where creatures live who used to be human.” She went on to explain how the monsters hunted from time to time, and how Liovia could see it happening in advance, giving them the opportunity to flee. Tisa told them of Liovia’s death, about meeting Olona, and their long journey to Teshon City.

“Liovia was a Bio-Shift,” Lahari informed her father, and the mystic looked at Tisa with compassion in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. We’re happy you’re here. And I, for one, can’t wait to meet Olona,” he added. “How long have you been here?”

“About a year and a half,” Tisa answered. Her eyes kept moving back to her fellow Xinitians. She was curious about them.

The large group stayed together late into the night, talking about the places they were from, and sharing some of their past experiences. When everyone finally decided to call it a night, they all started to leave, but Dozi came up with an idea.

She asked Sumi, “Can you make another one of your doorways that opens in my basement, so that all four of us could just walk through, like you’ve talked about?”

Sumi paused and looked at her. “I didn’t even know I could bring someone with me until that last mission. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes, reached out with her powers, and she felt for the basement. It came to her instantly and she opened her eyes. “It’s there,” Sumi said, and she took Harakin’s hand. “I think we all need to be connected.”

Dozi and Ilya both held onto Sumi’s other hand, and there was a blink, then the four of them were standing together in Dozi’s basement.

“Wow,” Ilya whispered.

“It worked,” marveled Sumi.

Dozi felt woozy. “I didn’t like that at all,” she said in a quavering voice. “I think I’ll just walk home next time.”✪