The Mantis Synchronicity - Book Five - 8. Chapter 8 - Gawa & Tisa

Before the two warrior women collected the heads of their victims, they had been in a meeting of the newly established Alliance of Shifts. The Tilthon Empire, and the city of Duguza in particular, were cruel places for Shifts. There was no secret community of Biological Shifts, most of whom were slaughtered in their youths during their transformations, and Gawa was unique among the few Alliance members who were willing to meet with her and Tisa.

There were seven Shift women, three men, eleven teenage girls, and four teenage boys. None of them were Biological Shifts. All of them looked sickly and weak, but Tisa and Gawa were like beacons of hope in the darkness, and the downtrodden Duguzan Shifts had not felt hope in a long time.

“Now that we understand the hierarchy of the leadership in this city,” Tisa said to the gathered group, “we’re ready. Let’s run through it.”

One of the women spoke up, “There’s a trio of prime executives who work together as a committee. They’re the top. Below them is a group of ministers.”

“Who are more like political puppets,” another woman added.

“Right,” the first continued, “but beneath them is only a single commander, an agent of the city watch.”

The other woman added, “He’s in charge of four battalions of soldiers.”

The first woman nodded. “The next high official is the city mayor. He pretends to be on the same level as the commander of the watch, but the mayor’s got no power over the battalions.”

Tisa continued. “Okay, what about the different guilds?”

One of the men answered her. “I used to be in the stone-worker’s guild. The heads of all the guilds are required to report directly to the mayor.”

A scrappy girl in her early teens added, “The head of the gaming guild pays me to run documents to the mayor on Mondays and Thursdays.”

“The mayor and the commander of the watch,” Gawa declared, and Tisa and quite a few of the others nodded at her words.

The warriors had their targets.

An hour later, in the darkness of the night, Gawa and Tisa approached the residence dedicated to whoever was mayor of Duguza at any given time. A tall wrought iron fence surrounded the house, and a small squadron of private soldiers was standing guard over the property. The house was not within the Heights’ gates, but it was on the border to the lofty neighborhood.

Gawa and Tisa approached the mayor’s building from the side, and they positioned themselves in a knot of trees with an almost clear view of the entire house. They could see the mayor. He was inside, writing at a desk, and two other guardsmen were with him.

A soldier who was patrolling the perimeter passed the trees where the women were hidden, but he did not see them.

Tisa’s eyes moved from the man, to the house, to the fence. She looked at Gawa. “I’ve got an idea.”

Gawa smiled wickedly, and her blank white eyes reflected the lights from the house behind Tisa. “I’ll cover you.”

Tisa snuck out from the trees, approached the fence, and even though it was a tight squeeze for her, the slender woman slipped between the bars and onto the mayor’s property. She rushed toward the house and managed to reach it unnoticed.

Gawa waited.

The city night was warm, and the house’s windows were open. Tisa slipped in through one of them, and Gawa could see her standing motionless in the room adjacent to where the mayor was working. Then Tisa made her move.

The door to the room swung open, and the three men inside were confronted with terrors they could never have imagined. Before the mayor, a void of shadow opened in the air like a hole leading to oblivion, and from it reached a swirling creature of darkness. The thing seemed to be made of mouths consuming mouths. Teeth stuck out everywhere, and in between the teeth, the monstrosity was covered in eyes. In front of the two guards, openings of darkness appeared. From one extended a machine comprised of smoke, and from the other came a barrage of pointed projectiles. They pierced the soldier’s arms and legs and torso countless times, as Tisa’s mechanical smoke grabbed the other and crushed him in grinding gears. The beast of mouths and teeth and eyes in front of the mayor thrust forward, sinking into his torso. He gurgled a horrible sound, and his insides became his outsides as his guts exploded.

The three men fell dead, and the shadows melded together into a single, headless, skeletal creature. It was holding an enormous black axe. In one fell swipe, it took the mayor’s head off. The floor around the bodies was covered in blood, but Tisa’s headless monster reached down and grabbed the head by its hair. It brought the dripping thing to Tisa.

Gawa could see everything inside, and she knew it was almost her turn. Tisa walked right out the front door of the house, and the other guards finally saw her. Most of them were on the outside of the fence, and rather than run around to the front or back entrances, many began pulling themselves over it. Gawa stepped up to the fence and unleashed a lavender lightning bolt that surged through the wrought iron, scorching to death everyone in contact with the metal.

Burned corpses fell all around the edge of the property, and those who had been lucky enough not to be touching the iron stepped back from their fallen companions in fear. Several soldiers abandoned their posts and fled into the city, but a few of them attacked.

Two men rushed at Tisa, but an opening of darkness appeared before them, and something stabbed forward, into them both. Whatever it was vanished as soon as it appeared, and the men’s innards splattered onto the ground as their bodies collapsed. Tisa strode between the mess while Gawa dealt with four guards outside the gates.

One of the soldiers managed to strike her in the side of the arm with a club, but Gawa’s powers moved with the speed of lightning, and even as she was injured, the man was electrocuted through his bludgeon with blazing energies. He was a scorched corpse before he hit the ground. Gawa groaned in pain, but she snatched up his weapon and channeled her powers through it. The other three guards were no match for her, and a moment later, Tisa and Gawa were heading away from many corpses through the dark streets again.

“How’s your arm?”

“There’ll be a nasty bruise, but I think I’ll live,” Gawa replied with a chuckle. “Nice work inside.”

Tisa raised the head.

“On to the head of the watch?” Gawa asked.

“The head?” Tisa repeated.

Gawa snickered as she flexed and stretched her arm.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good, thanks, Tisa.”

The two of them expected there to be much more resistance at the city watch station, and they were right to be prepared for it. Four heavily armed and armored guardsmen were stationed out front, and the women could see more of them inside. They could also see their second target.

Gawa nodded and Tisa began to approach, but then Gawa grabbed Tisa’s wrist and pulled her back. Tisa turned to Gawa, who squatted down, and her patterned fingers wrapped around the nozzle of a hose. “Let me go first,” she whispered.

She cranked on the spigot, pointed the end of the hose at the quartet of soldiers, and pulled the nozzle’s handle. A strong stream flowed onto the air and splashed all over the soldiers. They cried out in alarm and turned in the direction of the spray.

“What are you waiting for?” Tisa hissed to Gawa.

She was waiting for the men to be covered in enough water for her lightning to do its worst, and she released a bolt of electricity through the arcing stream. The men’s shouts of annoyance were instantly silenced. Their bodies became like cinders, and they collapsed to charred husks.

The men inside heard the ruckus caused by the four guards who were now dead, and several more rushed out from the front of the station. Gawa sent another blast of lightning into them as they stepped into the stream from her hose.

“I like having a long-range attack,” she said to Tisa, “even if it’s only a short-long range. Let’s go!” She dropped the hose and the two women bolted toward the front of the building. Then they ducked around the side of it and began to climb an external escape ladder system on the side of the station. They were both entering the third floor when a few soldiers began to climb up from below them.

Tisa made her way deeper into the station, and Gawa repeated her attack at the iron gates. She sent a bolt of purple electricity through the ladder and into the men who were climbing up.

The women’s target had been on the first floor, but they wanted the city watchmen to follow them so they could draw them out. The third floor of the building was a good place to stage their attack. Tisa approached an interior stairwell.

“Those witches have set up defensive positions above us!” a man below shouted.

Gawa rushed up behind Tisa. “What’s the situation?”

Tisa turned. “They think we’re trying to set up a fort up here or something. They don’t realize we’re the ones on the offensive.”

“Idiots,” Gawa replied.

Tisa looked over the banister, and she opened a hole in reality in the middle of the group of men below. A darkness creature that was like an octopus made of knives appeared, and it began hacking the men to pieces. They screamed and fought back, but their clubs and swords passed through the shadow monster like it was nothing.

“Where’s the commander?” Gawa asked.

“He wasn’t in that group,” Tisa replied.

Suddenly, another contingent of guards appeared behind the women.

“Grab them!” someone shouted.

One of them caught Tisa with his club, hitting her in the thigh and knocking her to the floor. Gawa lunged into the oncoming group, and even though one of their knives had sunk into her side, the men were no match for her. She screamed in fury and pain, and lavender lightning ripped into the men. One of Tisa’s shadow discs had a monster attacking another guard, but Gawa’s lightning chained from her targets, and a low-grade shock hit Tisa. Her shadow disappeared in an instant, and she cried out in alarm.

Gawa rushed to her. “Are you okay?! I don’t know how that happened!”

Tisa shook herself and groaned. She blinked hard a few times and pushed herself to her feet. “I’m okay.”

Behind the men they had just killed, a final squad burst upon the women, but at the sight of the fallen guardsmen, several of them backed away.

“You,” Gawa stated, pointing at the commander, who was frozen in his tracks.

“Who are you people?” he barked. “What do you want with us? Why are you killing my men? They’re innocent!”

Neither Tisa nor Gawa reacted to the commander’s hollow words, and a creature of shadow appeared behind him. A single swipe removed his head, and Gawa walked up to collect it, but one of the other guards grabbed her wrist to try and stop her. It was the last mistake he ever made. Violet electricity pulsed into the man and roasted him before he could pull his fingers away. His scorched hand fell from Gawa’s forearm as she snatched the severed head by its hair.

“Oh no…” Tisa whispered when Gawa turned to face her. “There’s a knife in your guts!”

“Yeah,” Gawa grunted, “thanks for letting me know.”

“We have to take it out!”

Gawa shook her head. “I’m not bleeding too bad, but if we pull it out, it might get worse, and the med-kit’s back at the boat.”

“Well then we need to get out of here,” Tisa urged.

Gawa got a stroke of inspiration. “The basement!”

“What do you mean?”

Gawa smiled at Tisa. “I spent my teenage years in the Teshon City underground. Once I’d changed and the other Bio-Shifts welcomed me below, I lived there for years. I may not know my way around this city’s underground, but that’s where we should go.”

Tisa conceded, and the two women took the stairs to the first floor. They continued deeper into the bowels of the building as more soldiers rallied outside, but by the time another battalion had assembled, Tisa and Gawa were nowhere to be found.

The two women limped their way through the drainage pipes of the sewer system beneath Duguza. They knew the pipes led to the foul river, although they knew to avoid the water, its path would provide their escape. Sure enough, they eventually followed the nasty trickle at their feet to where it dribbled into the stagnant river.

The stench was overpowering, and Gawa vomited at the mouth of the tunnel. “Gross,” she moaned, and she clutched at the knife’s handle. “That… hurt.”

“Let’s move,” Tisa managed to choke out.

They followed the sludge that filled the waterway, creeping through the darkness until the river ahead of them was covered by a bridge that provided almost no space beneath it. Gawa and Tisa helped each other up the nasty banks to the street above. It was empty, and the two of them hobbled out of town. No one saw them or noticed the severed heads they each carried.

They made their way back to the houseboat, and they did not mean to wake Djaruki; they did not realize she was asleep on the ground. She was shocked by the state of them. Z’Matri came out from the boat, seemingly unaffected by the fact that the women were both holding dead men’s heads.

“What happened? You two look rough.” He stepped up to them, but then he flinched away. “You stink!”

“Yeah, sorry, we made our way out of town along the filth of the river,” Tisa replied. She then stated, “Gawa’s fucked up.”

Djaruki realized what Tisa was talking about, and she shrieked, “You’ve got a knife in you!”

“You got me,” Gawa said weakly. “They didn’t hit anything vital, so it’s not bad.”

“It’s really bad!” Djaruki countered. “Can I fix you? Please, can I fix you?”

Z’Matri, Tisa, and Gawa did not know what she meant.

“Let me fix you,” Djaruki demanded. “Take the knife out and let me fix you.”

Gawa looked from Tisa to Z’Matri to Djaruki, and she said with a shrug, “Okay.”

“Lie down!” Djaruki ordered. She turned to Z’Matri. “You take it out for her.”

He assisted Gawa in lying onto the table, and he looked into her blank eyes. “This ain’t gonna be pretty,” he stated. His hand hovered over the blade’s handle. “You ready?”

“Wait,” she replied, “Tisa, grab my bag for me so I can bite down on the leather strap.” Tisa handed it to Gawa, who stuck it in her mouth and nodded to Z’Matri. In one smooth movement, he slid the blade from Gawa’s guts.

Gawa let out a cry through her gritted teeth. She gasped and tried to take a breath, but she coughed and doubled over into a fetal position. The pain in her side was like a searing hot poker twisting in her abdomen. She felt faint, and her head swam from the pain, but Gawa suddenly sat upright with her blank eyes wide. The pain had diminished, and the wound in her side was sealed!

“How did you do that?” Tisa asked.

Djaruki turned to her and Z’Matri. “I don’t know. I’ve just always been able to make my own wounds heal faster. I’ve never used it on anyone else before. I didn’t know if it would work, but I had to try.”

Gawa responded to her in a quiet voice of surprise. “Well I appreciate you doing it.” She gingerly ran her fingertips around the edge of the wound. “How… how did you do this?”

Djaruki looked at each of them. “I think it’s my air power, but I’m just using it differently. I mean, I think that’s what I’m doing.”

“Well I may not understand it,” Gawa replied, “but thank you.”

“Are you in much pain?” Tisa asked her.

Gawa flinched as she turned toward Tisa. “It still hurts, but much less.”

Djaruki looked relieved. “Oh, good, I’m so glad it worked.”

“And Tisa, what about you?” Z’Matri asked. “You’re limping.”

“Caught a club to the hip.”

“Also, I accidentally gave you a little shock,” Gawa admitted.

Z’Matri looked alarmed.

“I’m fine!” Tisa replied quickly. “My leg hurts though.” She removed her trousers, and Z’Matri, Gawa, and Djaruki all made sympathetic noises in unison. An enormous green and purple bruise had spread across the top third of Tisa’s thigh. “Do we have any ice?” she asked. “Oh, Gawa, we were so focused on your stomach, I forgot about your arm.”

“It’s not bad, didn’t even bruise like I expected it to.” She rubbed the spot where she had been hit. “Oh, it is a bit sore though.”

While Z’Matri ministered to the injuries Tisa and Gawa had sustained, Djaruki could not help but to focus on the dead men’s heads, now seated on the grass, slowly leaking their vile fluids. Their eyes were rolled back; their mouths were agape with crooked jaws, and one of their tongues had lolled out. Djaruki stared at them. They were people, or at least, they had been people, and she hated the look of the two hideous things, but she could not look away.

These two Shift women were just going around slaughtering people, and the thought of it unsettled Djaruki. She did not know if she would stay with them any longer.

“How many do you think we killed?” Gawa asked.

Tisa winced at the ointment Z’Matri spread over her bruise. “Probably at least fifteen,” she hissed through her teeth.

They killed fifteen people?! Djaruki thought to herself.

“When are you supposed to deliver the heads?” Z’Matri asked, and Djaruki could not help but notice how casual his question was.

“Before sunrise,” Tisa replied.

“Our contacts are expecting us,” Gawa added. “Once we’re patched up, we’ll be good.” Gawa looked over at Djaruki and added, “Thanks again for what you did.” She gently rubbed her side.

Djaruki nodded, but she was hiding that she did not feel comfortable around the Shifts she had found. She was not sure she could consider them friends.

“Do you two have time to rest a little?” Z’Matri asked Gawa and Tisa. “I can wake you up when you need to leave.”

“That’d be nice,” Tisa replied. “Can you wake us up in about ninety minutes?”

“Let’s clean ourselves before we lie down,” Gawa added.

Z’Matri assured them he would wake them up, and the two women headed onto the houseboat. Z’Matri and Djaruki stayed outside, but he did not talk to her; he was still thinking about the Shift in the Heights.

Ninety minutes later, he did not seem to have remembered that he needed to wake up the sleeping women, and Djaruki quietly reminded him. “Excuse me, Z’Matri. Don’t we need to wake up Tisa and Gawa?”

He seemed startled. “Oh, right, thanks.” He headed onboard the houseboat, and a few minutes later, the three of them came out onto the shore.

Tisa and Gawa looked very tired, but they collected the two heads and began to make their way back into town.

Z’Matri did not say a word to Djaruki, but he re-entered the houseboat and closed the door.

Djaruki silently packed her bag and left. She headed north along the river, which grew cleaner and cleaner the farther she progressed away from human habitation. The sun began to rise, and tears filled Djaruki’s eyes. She did not know why she was crying, but she could not stop herself. She sobbed as she walked, and the sun glared in her tears. Those Shifts had not been the people she hoped they would be; they were not the Shifts she was looking for✪