The Mantis Synchronicity - Book Five - 32. Chapter 32 - Tisa

While Gawa was heading with her group to the armory, Tisa was in a much larger contingent of Shifts on their way to the Heights. Unlike Gawa’s crew, who were stealthy in their initial assault, those in Tisa’s crowd were determined to be seen by as many people as possible. They were carrying torches, and quite a few of them were singing a song in the native language of the people of Duguza.

A bell began ringing out, and one of the Shifts marching beside Tisa said, “That’s the city watch’s warning bell.”

“Good, they know we’re coming, which means Gawa should have fewer soldiers to deal with. Most of the watch should be focused on us.” She smiled as she heard the muffled boom of an explosion go off in the distance.

The Shifts were almost to the Heights, and at their gates, fierce resistance was waiting for them.

“Halt!” demanded a commander of the city watch. A small squadron of soldiers was with him. “We have you surrounded!”

Archers appeared on the roofs of several buildings flanking the street, and another group of watchmen came stomping up the road behind the Shifts. The guards were attempting to block any escape, but Tisa and the Shifts of the rebellion did not stop marching, and a glowing shield appeared and surrounded them.

“Open fire!” the commander roared to the archers.

Arrows rained down, pelting off the shield and causing no harm to the Shifts.

The commander drew his sword and yelled, “Charge!”

The Shifts were far outnumbered, but they were much more powerful than the mere humans who attacked them, and a few Shifts unleashed their energies. Three who possessed power-channeling abilities fired their unique cosmic waves of blue, green, and yellow at the city watchmen, and all who were hit by the blasts were demolished.

However, the multiple frequencies of energy caused the Shift who was controlling the shield to falter, and another volley of arrows sailed down, hitting several Shifts. The streets of Duguza spiraled into chaos.

All around Tisa, fellow Shifts were crying out in fear and pain. A man she had just met for the first time that day was struck with an arrow through his heart, and he dropped dead to the street in front of her. Clawing hands clutched at Tisa’s arm, and she turned to a teenage girl with an arrow in one of her eyes. The child was screaming.

The trio of Shifts with long-range abilities each fired their own cosmic energies. They appeared as rings of blue fire, zigzagging green beams, and yellow orbs of power. The men of the city watch were brutalized by the assault, and multiple buildings along the street behind the soldiers began to burn. The screams of the dying rang through the air, and smoke started to choke the area.

As more arrows sailed down among the Shifts, Tisa focused up on the archers. With her terrifying power, she caused voids of shadow to appear around the soldiers, and from the openings came headless skeletal torsos of darkness armed with weapons from the void. Wails of anguish and screams of panic rang out from the rooftops, as Tisa’s monstrous entities hacked into the archers, and their body parts rained down onto the street below, heads, fingers, hands, arms, entrails…

Tisa’s attention was still on the men above, when another Shift woman leapt in front of her, between Tisa and a city watchman’s spear. The man had thrust it at Tisa’s face, but her fellow Shift took the blow, and the weapon sank into the woman’s chest. She crumpled to the pavement, sacrificing her own life. As the man struggled to withdraw his spear from her flesh, Tisa’s gaze dropped to her body. The girl with the arrow in her eye was also dead, and the Shift with the power to create shields lay slain beside her.

Tisa roared like a banshee and unleashed an assault of shadow against the watchman, who finally yanked his spear from the dead woman; he was too late. A void opened before him, and from the hole extended a gargantuan hand. Each fingertip was a chomping mouth full of jagged teeth, and at the center of the palm was a larger, circular mouth with teeth that were rotating like a buzz saw. The thing bit into the guard, who gurgled as it chewed its way through his torso. The gruesome hand then grabbed another soldier and instantly crushed the man; his flesh and bone shards stuck out between the fingers of darkness. Tisa’s monstrous hand disappeared, and the mangled corpse fell to the street.

The Shift with blue rings of fire pushed forward, targeting the main force of the city watch that was ahead of the group. His rings burned whatever they touched. At the back of the rebels, the Shift with beams of green energy fired them into the enemies who were attacking from the rear. More soldiers were making their way up several side alleys to try and flank the rebels, and the Shift with orbs of yellow power focused on them. The balls of light ripped through the watchmen, scorching the concrete walls of the buildings on both sides of the alleyways.

Tisa’s slaughter of the archers had taken out many of them, but several more arrows came sailing down into the unprotected Shifts. A large contingent of watchmen was still attacking on the ground, and Tisa was forced to focus on them. Pockets of shadow appeared out of thin air and produced more of her monsters, which clawed and bit and slashed the men, and corpses littered the streets.

None of the three Shifts with energy-blast attacks had been injured, and they continued to fire at the soldiers. More beams of blue, green, and yellow power killed many of the watchmen, until eventually the city watch retreated. They had been decimated.

Tisa hazarded a glance behind her. Many Shifts were dead.

Then shocking pain exploded in her shoulder.

Tisa cried out and fell to her knees with an arrow firmly lodged in her upper arm. She looked toward the rooftops and attacked the few remaining archers. Tisa’s monsters of darkness destroyed them with horns and fangs and pincers that filled the men with horror before they were slaughtered.

The city watch had been defeated, but Tisa did not feel like the Shifts were victorious. She was still on her knees and her arm was screaming in pain. “Too many have died,” she whispered, looking around herself at all the corpses. Dead humans surrounded the Shift survivors, but Tisa only focused on the bodies right beside her. Many Shifts lay contorted, frozen in the agony they faced as their lives slipped away. The battle did not feel like a success, and tears began to stream from Tisa’s eyes. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the pain she felt in her soul for the loss of so many of her kind.

The gates around the Heights still stood, protecting the neighborhood where the wealthy people of Duguza lived, although several sections of the lofty area inside the gates now burned.

“Tear them to the ground,” Tisa growled, and multiple Shifts poured their energies into the metal gates, twisting the beams into tangled knots of iron.

“Forward!” one of the other Shifts cried.

Too few of them were left.

Tisa was having trouble focusing through the pain, but someone took the hand of her uninjured arm.

“Let’s get you to a medic.”

Tisa realized that like her, several other Shifts had non-fatal arrows in them as well, and a few uninjured rebels were helping them. Tisa was assisted to her feet, and with the others who could not push farther into the Heights, she limped her way to a medical treatment center.

Over the next several hours, the arrows were removed from the injured, and the wounds were treated and stitched up as needed. The night passed without further incident, and as morning arrived, there was no sign of the Shifts who had entered the Heights, and there had been no word from Gawa.

“I’m going back out,” Tisa declared with the rising of the sun. Her arm was in a sling. She turned to the others. “We need to find out what happened to everyone.”

Those who were up for it returned to the destroyed gates, but they paused at the edge of the Heights; much of the neighborhood had burned to the ground during the night. Many of the fancy houses and little bistros that had always been inaccessible to those deemed lesser, were now nothing more than smoldering husks of their former opulence. Fires had spread through some of the lower city as well, but the devastation to the Heights was shocking.

Tisa and a few Shift rebels stepped over the twisted metal of the gates, and they started searching through the neighborhood. Other citizens of Duguza also began cautiously exploring the destruction. Tisa and the Shifts were looking for their missing companions; they began finding corpses. Burned bodies were strewn among the rubble. Many were mostly indistinguishable, scorched beyond recognition.

One of the Shifts with Tisa whispered in shock, “This is terrible.”

Another fearful voice added, “What have we done?”

The group began to wander through the smoldering remains along the edge of what had been the Heights.

“They’re just gone,” Tisa stated. “The Heights are just gone.” She picked up a burned doll that was missing its head.

“Obliterated is more like it,” another rebel countered.

“It wasn’t like this in Teshon City,” Tisa mumbled in disbelief. “The old Oselian concrete is indestructible, or at least, almost indestructible. We took out the Messiahs, but most of the city was still intact at the end of it all, not like this.” She dropped the headless doll onto a pile of ashes that swirled into the air along the ground.

“I’m going back to check on the headquarters!” one person called out, and several rebels headed away from the Heights.

Tisa joined them.

They were confronted by death when they arrived.

The body of Elder Inthal was being carried out of the building on a stretcher. A shroud was over his face.

Gawa was there. She grabbed Tisa’s uninjured arm and pulled her aside. “Things went bad. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Tisa replied. She shook her head. “It was bad for us too. Should we go find Z’Matri and see what he thinks about all this?”

Gawa nodded. “I know he hasn’t been involved, but yes. I want to go talk to him.” She added, “Also, a couple of the locals aren’t happy with me right now.”

The cinder of the city watchman’s body was carried on a stretcher out of the building next.

“Who’s that?” Tisa hissed to Gawa.

“Let’s go back to the boat, and I’ll tell you.”

As the two women walked through the quiet morning streets toward the edge of town, they each told the other all they had gone through, and everything that had gone wrong. They arrived at the houseboat, but there was no sign of Z’Matri, and for the remainder of the day, they discussed what their next course of action should be. They both also endlessly went over their attacks, and how things could have gone differently.

Night fell, and Tisa and Gawa spent it restlessly dozing and startling themselves awake from fitful dreams.

Z’Matri did not return with the sunrise, and Tisa and Gawa spent the following day waiting for him. Night again approached, but instead of Z’Matri returning as Tisa and Gawa hoped, the scrappy girl from the attack on the armory came to find the two women.

“Aerta, what are you doing here?” Gawa asked. The girl had not seemed afraid at all while attacking the armory, but now she was nervous, and Gawa could tell. “What’s wrong?”

Aerta looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was following her. “A group of Shifts,” she began, turning back to the women, “have taken over Duguza. They’ve been killing regular people in the street, and a contingent of the imperial military has been deployed from the capital city to come gain control of Duguza.”

“Who’s in charge of the Shifts?” Tisa asked.

“I don’t know,” Aerta replied, “but more of our people keep joining them. I think the Shifts are trying to take over the whole city.”

Tisa and Gawa looked at each other.

“Shall we pay them a visit?” Gawa recommended.

“Indeed we shall,” Tisa replied.

“Is your arm okay?” Aerta asked Tisa.

A sling was holding her limb. “It is. I lived in a forest for most of my life, and I learned how to heal wounds. Once the arrow was out of my shoulder, I was able to keep treating it on my own. Thanks.”

The three headed back into town, but the teenager opted to hide out in a seedy tavern on the outskirts of the city, while Tisa and Gawa continued farther. Aerta had told them the new Shift leadership had set up a command post in the old Duguza city hall, a stone building right on the nasty waterfront, and Tisa and Gawa approached, but Gawa suddenly froze in her tracks.

Tisa turned and looked at her. “What is it?”

“My powers are gone,” Gawa whispered. Nothing had changed about her very unique appearance, and even Gawa herself could not understand how she was aware that they were gone, but when Tisa raised her hand to create a disc of shadow, nothing happened. “We must be close to the Shift who stops other Shifts’ powers,” Gawa added.

“I don’t like this,” Tisa stated. “I feel vulnerable.”

“Z’Matri said he stepped out of it and his powers returned.”

The two of them walked backward, out of the circle, and they felt their powers return. Tisa and Gawa did not know what to do, but then they saw Z’Matri running toward them. He was inside the circle✪