The Mantis Corruption - Book Three - 5. Chapter 5 - Sumi & Harakin, Part Two

Sumi and Harakin sat up in the darkness.

The Voice was speaking.

“Wake up, twins. It’s time.”

The two young women waited, but the Voice said no more.

“Get dressed,” whispered Sumi.

“Training drills?” Harakin asked.

Sumi shrugged.

They both pulled on their nighttime mission gear, as the door to their dormitory opened.

The man whom they referred to as the Voice entered, but he stopped in the doorframe and did not approach them.

Sumi and Harakin kept their eyes down out of habit.

“This is your location,” the Voice stated, and he held up a photograph toward Sumi.

It was a castle.

He raised a second image. “And this is your primary target,” the Voice added.

The picture was of an elderly man with a gray mustache and thinning hair. He was wearing a band of gold around his head set with a single gem. It may have been a simplistic design, but there was no mistaking that it was a crown.

“He will have guards,” the Voice continued. “There will be counselors and advisers, and after your primary target, your orders are to eliminate as many others from his entourage as you can.” He then added, “You will be going alone.”

Sumi and Harakin were surprised to hear that. This was the first time they were being sent on a mission without being overseen by a military strike team. Sumi was part of covert attacks from time to time, but Harakin’s experience outside the compound was limited to a single three-day mission along the perimeter of the Infinite Waste.

“Twin One,” the Voice said to Sumi, “you will bring Twin Two through your doorway, and the pair of you will enter this location via the basement.” He held up the castle image again. “The cellars and dungeons are a maze of old military tunnels, not difficult to navigate, and the residents rarely go below. There should be few to no enemies in the lower chambers. That is where you will begin.”

The Voice held up the picture of the old man again. “Sweep through the palace, first to the throne room, and if the target is not found, proceed to the royal bed chambers. Twin Two, you are our blade in the dark,” he informed Harakin. “The target and the target’s associates must be eliminated. You are expected to leave many, many bodies in your wake,”

Sumi and Harakin looked at each other.

“Twin One,” the Voice said again to Sumi, “open a doorway in the basement of the castle,” he commanded. “Focus on the image. Its basement exists, so find it in your mind. Then open your door.”

Sumi was surprised by this information. She only ever teleported by her line of sight, and only by herself. Appearing in an unknown location seemed impossible, never mind appearing in the basement of a photograph, and bringing someone with her. The very idea sounded ridiculous. Sumi looked at Harakin again, turned back to the Voice, and hesitantly asked, “Confirming orders, sir, we’re going away from the base?”

“Affirmative,” he answered, “this mission is offsite. Now, engage, Twin One. Open a door to the cellars of this castle.” He held up the image again.

“Confirming orders, sir,” Sumi repeated, “I’m supposed to take Harakin through my doorway with me?”

“Affirmative,” the Voice said again. “Engage.”

Sumi stared at the photograph of the castle. Very little was revealed in the grainy picture, but in her mind she began to feel like she could almost see more of the structure. The rest of it seemed to come to her and she furrowed her brow in concentration. She looked over at Harakin with uncertainty and took her hand.

The two of them stepped through Sumi’s doorway in reality, and they appeared in a dark basement of rough-hewn stone. Several torches burned along one wall. The space was cluttered, and there were no people.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Sumi said in a voice of awe.

“Where are we?” Harakin whispered.

Sumi looked unsure. “I don’t know, that picture, I guess.” She brought her palm to one of the rough rock walls.

“Let’s get this over with,” Harakin said.

Sumi felt distracted. Her mind was racing with more thoughts than she was used to thinking. The horrible existence at the compound kept Sumi’s creativity and imagination suppressed, and things she had never thought before now swirled in her brain.

Harakin was focused. She absorbed the faint light from the torches, and a pair of blades appeared in the air. They hovered in front of her, slowly spinning, and they moved with Harakin as she started walking forward through the narrow hallways of the cellar.

Sumi followed, and around a few corners, they came to a flight of stairs. They ascended and found a massive steel door. It would not budge.

“Wait,” Sumi said, and she put her hand on Harakin’s arm, “I can…” but she paused.

“What is it?” Harakin asked her.

Sumi closed her eyes. “I can feel the space on the other side of the door.”

“How do we know there aren’t people there?”

“There might be,” Sumi said matter of factly, “and if there are, they are all targets. I can’t feel if anyone’s there, but I can feel the other side of the door.”

Harakin was confused. “How is that possible?” she asked. “And how did you bring me through your doorway? And how did you open a door in someplace you’ve never been and couldn’t see? What else can you do?”

Sumi did not reply.

Noises on the other side of the steel impediment interrupted their discussion.

“Targets acquired,” Harakin whispered.

Sumi took Harakin’s hand, and they stepped through Sumi’s doorway into the next room. There were more people than they expected, but they neither paused nor hesitated.

Harakin’s two hovering blades launched forward through the air and stabbed into a pair of startled-looking men of the king’s court. More glowing weapons materialized around Harakin that slashed and spun and hacked into flesh, and a moment later, she and Sumi were the only living people in the room. (unarmed)

Seven corpses lay sprawled on the polished marble floor of the hall.

Sumi and Harakin examined each of them.

“These are all secondary targets.”

“Where’s the throne room?” asked Harakin.

“I can…” Sumi began again.

Harakin waited. “What?” she asked. “You can what?”

Sumi closed her eyes. “I can feel it.”

She reached out for Harakin’s hand, and they stepped through another one of her doorways that led beyond reality. They appeared in the huge throne room. It was dark and silent, and the royal chairs sat empty at the other end of it.

“No one’s in here,” Harakin whispered.

“Look,” Sumi said, and she pointed, “behind the thrones, that door opens to a set of stairs.”

Torches around the room flared to life, illuminating the hall in bright light, as a woman descended the stairs and entered the throne room.

She froze, but then she scowled at the two intruders and barked, “Who dares enter the hall of the king?! I am queen of the river realm, and I demand…” but her voice was cut off, along with her head.

Harakin was on the woman in a flash, and her blades cut through the queen’s neck as easily as lopping off the flower of a dandelion.

Her crowned head hit the floor with a clank and a wet flub noise. A fountain of blood erupted from her body.

Sumi began to say, “Secondary target elimin…” but she too was interrupted.

A voice behind the headless queen screamed, as the woman’s body slumped to a pile on the floor. Three youths stood frozen on the lowest steps. They were too shocked to move.

The scream drew the attention of unseen guards who came rushing into the throne room, and the king himself pushed passed his children. He stopped dead in his tracks, and he wailed at the sight of his wife’s corpse.

Sumi and Harakin then did what they were trained to do. Even though Harakin was closer to their primary target, she turned to deal with the guards, and Sumi traded places with her.

The old man positioned himself between Sumi’s oncoming assault and his children. He drew his mighty sword and roared at her.

Sumi stepped through one of her doorways, and she took the king’s torso with her, but she left his arm and his weapon in the throne room.

The sword clanged to the floor, still clutched in the king’s hand, but his legs did not fall. They stood rigid like a horrible statue, and with nothing to contain what innards remained, the king’s intestines sloughed from atop his hips down onto his sword.

His three children were barely given an instant to shriek or cry at seeing their parents murdered.

Sumi stepped up to them, and she walked through one of her doorways with the two elder princelings’ heads.

The young princess stared at the carnage in terror and tears ran down her face. Her brothers’ decapitated bodies fell beside the remains of her parents.

Then Sumi passed through another one of her doors, and the entire child was gone.

Harakin’s blades of light surrounded her, and she launched them toward the armed guards. Her vicious weapons impaled and gouged and cut through the men’s armor, cleaving deep into their flesh. She cut off hands and arms and heads. The anguished cries of the dying were temporary, and Harakin silenced them.

Sumi turned from the corpses of the royal family, satisfied with the completion of their task, and she looked over to see Harakin slaughtering an entire squadron of soldiers. Bodies squirmed on the floor all around her, as the life within them poured from the grievous wounds caused by her conjured weapons.

Blades flashed into existence with the speed of Harakin’s thoughts, and the humans who dared to challenge her were no match. She ducked, swiped with a sword of light, and chopped off both of one man’s legs. Harakin rose like a monstrous surgeon surrounded by the amputated limbs of her enemies.

Sumi’s feelings of success were then dashed right before her eyes.

The legless soldier was writhing on the floor at Harakin’s feet, but before his life was sapped, he managed to grab a fallen spear and thrust it up at her.

To Sumi’s horror, the weapon’s tip sliced deep into Harakin’s neck, and her blood spurted once before she slammed her hands over her throat.

Harakin fell to her knees.

“No!” screamed Sumi. She rushed through one of her mystical doorways to Harakin. Sumi reached out to take her hand, so they could escape with her power, but another soldier was charging at Harakin. He crashed into Sumi as she appeared, and she fell, sprawling to the tiled throne room floor.

Another guard was on her, and he swung his club down at Sumi. She threw up her arm in a defensive move, and his blow collided with it. She felt the two bones in her forearm snap, and she cried out in pain. Sumi clutched her damaged arm with her opposite hand, and someone grabbed her from behind and yanked her away from Harakin. She was thrown across the hard stone floor and rolled to a stop. Her eyes shot to Harakin.

Her injured companion gasped the word, “Go!” with her eyes full of pleading. Harakin released one hand from the terrible wound that was pouring blood from her neck, and she reached above her head. “Go!” she managed a second time.

Sumi knew what was happening.

In the air above Harakin, she manifested a storm of blades. She conjured so many in an instant that they pushed against the walls of the chamber, and the very stones of the castle itself began to buckle. Harakin gritted her teeth and made eye contact with Sumi one last time, as the hand Harakin held aloft above her head formed a fist.

Sumi activated her unique ability as a life-saving reflex, and she disappeared through one of her doorways, as Harakin’s countless daggers of energetic lightforce came crashing down on the throne room floor.

All within were slain, and the royal structure itself began to collapse.

Sumi suddenly found herself standing alone in the dark silence of the dormitory.

The Voice crackled to life. “Mission accomplished?” it asked. Then the Voice added in a tone of surprise, “Where is Twin Two?

The pain in Sumi’s broken arm was causing her head to spin, and she collapsed to the floor.

When she came to, Sumi was strapped down to a gurney and several medics were standing over her.

“My arm,” she moaned.

“The bones have already been set,” one of them stated, “and the arm is bound with a splint. It will take time to heal.”

Sumi winced.

Then the Voice repeated itself. “Where is Twin Two?”

Sumi’s eyes went wide with realization, and tears streamed down her cheeks; she did not possess the will to stop them.

“They killed her,” she bawled.

“Was the mission a success?” the Voice asked.

“She’s dead!” Sumi cried.

“Was the mission successful?!” the Voice yelled.

“Yes,” she whimpered, “mission complete.”

The Voice went silent.

“You’re nearly patched up,” said one of the medics. “I’ll bring you to your quarters.”

He released the straps, helped Sumi into a wheelchair, and rolled her out of the room. However, when he turned her down the hallway that led away from the dormitory, Sumi started to panic.

“No, wait!” she pleaded. “Why?! Not the black cell!”

The fear within Sumi diminished her to the cowering child who was first abducted and brought to the compound. She writhed in the wheelchair but was powerless to stop the guard from opening the putrid chamber and pushing the chair into it. He closed the door behind her.

The sobs that wracked Sumi’s body managed to dredge up the little girl who still lived deep inside of her, and she lost any sense of her power. The despair in the crawling darkness of the cell overwhelmed her, and Sumi’s mind tumbled into delirium★