Chapter 11: Hiding from shadow in shadow.

A shadow lord is not a complicated existence. Shadow lords are a manner of ur-shadow, a shadow a step above their kin. These particular ur-shadows are called lords due to having a degree of control over the shadows in the shadow,dream or mirror town they live in. Mindless shadows will obey a shadow lord without question, un-awakened shadows of kiganites will do likewise. Even a shadow that has gained a will of its own will have trouble resisting a shadow lord, unless it is a lord itself.

Often these shadow-lords are just the shadows of powerful people or monsters in Kigan, or of mere rulers.

Peeking out from his hiding place, a crack in one of the towering buildings, Bab-Lin was quite nervous. He had not seen many shadow lords in his time, but the one raging in the open area was by far the largest he had ever seen. It lashed around with long mighty arms, and white light blazed forth from its round eyes.

Normally shadows are featureless, but shadows that gain a will apart from their original owner’s gain a rather unnerving pair of round glowing white eyes.

-WHERE ARE YOU? SINGER? DO NOT HIDE FROM ME? I WILL NOT HARM YOU!-

Bab-Lin was sceptical of the shadow’s claims. He pulled back into the crack that he had stuffed himself and Aira’s limp body into. He muttered a curse directed at Vah-Eadh, the aryaith of shadows. This was not a good situation. It would have been better if the shadow lord had been willess, but then given what had been going on with the cages, he supposed that would have been unlikely.

He jammed the small end of his cane-club into a crack within the crack he was in. He needed fuel to get Aira awaken. He shook his head, he really hoped she didn’t make a habiting of natural casting, it was dangerous enough for normal non magician type people, but for a golem? Far more risky.

If she wasn’t careful, she’d tear her own shadows apart.

Bab-Lin pushed the thought from his mind, and pulled on his cane-club, dislodging a shadow from its natural place. He hoped the shadow lord didn’t notice. He tried to hold his breath as the shadow came completely unstuck, speared on the end of his cane-club.

The shadow lord was still raging, tearing great chunks from the ground and walls. Bab-Lin let his breath out slowly. *Best purchase I ever made* he thought to himself, opening Aira’s hatch and shoving the shadow in.

Closing the hatch, he was suddenly panic struck. Why had the shadow lord not noticed the smoke coming from him? It would be billowing out of the crack!. Bab-Lin looked out, there wasn’t any smoke coming out. He looked above him.

He was beginning to wonder about this crack he had found. Above him, quite well hidden was a trapdoor, slightly ajar. Evidentially this was some manner of secret passage in Kigan. He had no idea why it existed, he was just glad it did. He pushed the trapdoor fully open, and climbed up. With some difficulty he pulled Aira after him.

Looking about, he saw four shadows of varying sizes seated around a table. The shadows were going through the motions of playing a card game, each holding nothing at all and placing down cards that weren’t there. Bab-Lin almost chuckled. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised that he had stumbled upon a town’s hidden thieves den, though it was possibly just a gambling ring.

He could still hear the muffled sounds of the shadow lord’s rage. It was a good sign, what worried him was when the shadow calmed down and started searching in a more reasonable manner. The worst case would be the shadow having the presence of mind to call upon the shadows residing in the town to aid in the search.

No, Bab-Lin was glad the shadow lord was raging.

He looked at Aira again. Just as he got ready to give her a belt with his cane-club to get the transmuter going. It started all by itself. Bab-Lin sighed. Though he wondered if this meant that last time she would have got going on her own anyway.

Aira went ridged, swirling sigils swirling and lighting up, their blue light fed on by the dark.

Her Crystal eyeball lit up. Bab-Lin was watching the ‘card-playing’ shadows. They stiffened as Aira awoke. Looking about quickly, in case the shadow lord was now using the lesser shadows Bab-Lin noticed another ladder leading up. He dragged the still waking Aira to it and climbed, he burst through the trapdoor over the ladder.

“climb!” he shouted to Aira.

Aira, not quite awake, defaulted to the golem tendency to take orders. She followed him up the ladder. Bab-Lin closed the trapdoor behind her. Looking about, he found no shadows on the floor they were on.

“What happened?” Aira asked.

Bab-Lin threw down his pack, along with his small fuzzy shoulder bag. He pulled out a small bar like thing, wrapped in paper with strange runes on it. He began eating, Aira hadn’t expected it to be a ration.

Bab-Lin gulped.

“Well, you of course collapsed from your spellsong, could you perhaps stop doing that by the way I wouldn’t like to see you die, or worse become a wyrd”

Wyrds were conduits to the flow of magic, as much in control of the flows as the flows controlled them, most were insane, and more simply ended up exploding.

“Sorry…” Aira said, she looked around “Where are Phule and the bird?”

Bab-Lin shrugged.

“No idea, I lost the bird while you were singing, for that matter, I’m not sure I’d have been able to keep hold of it during a song like that, as for Phule, not seen a feather of her since before the song, she may have run off”

There was a muffled rumble, as the shadow lord lashed about.

Bab-Lin laughed a bit manically.

“Ah. Yes, we also have a shadow lord looking for you. joy.”

“Oh dear” Aira said despondently.

Bab-Lin wanted to tell her off for singing, to say that he was right, that she shouldn’t have done it.

He couldn’t bring himself to. He thought of what Fram had done to him. Imprisonment, a kinder imprisonment to be sure. No what had been going on in this town had been wrong.

He just hoped they didn’t end up prisoners of this shadow lord in turn. Bab-Lin had for some time been warming up to the idea of working for the benefit of others, but he wasn’t keen on the idea of sacrificing himself for someone.

“We need to escape, don’t we?” Aira said.

Bab-Lin nodded.

“At this stage, we don’t know where Phule or the bird are, so we’d be best escaping and heading back to Talvharn”.

He briefly considered abandoning Aira, it would be far easier to escape without her. He shook his head, betraying her was an option he had rejected back when facing Fram. He would stand with her, for better or for worse. His lot was now cast with her’s.

Aira looked up.

“The roof?”

“Yes, we might be able to make our escape across the rooftops”.

There was no ladder, not even a trapdoor. Aira shook her head, of course, being a shadow town of an underground town, it wasn’t odd that normally the buildings would have no roofs.

The shadow lord was still raging.

“Ah, wait, If I destroy part of the ceiling when the shadow lord is making noise it should be fine right?”

Bab-Lin thought about it for a bit, he decided it was a better gamble than trying to sneak past the shadows below them, climb out of the crack and attempting to get past the shadow lord on the ground.

“Yes, it is a good idea” he agreed.

Aira nodded and braced herself, pointing her pincer arm at the ceiling. It snapped open. The shadow at the end of it swirled angrily. She waited for the shadow lord to make a noise…

The instant a rumble started, a shadowy blade flickered from her pincer, and through the ceiling. There was a great cracking noise, and part of the ceiling crumbled away, leaving a pile of rubble.

They carefully climbed up, wary of the shadow lord spotting them.

As it turned out they need not have worried that much. The rooftops of the buildings offered great cover. They were as if someone had snapped the buildings out of the ground, the tops were covered with jagged and jutting out uneven rocks.

Below the shadow lord was beginning to calm, stalking the streets, hoping to find the singer or some uncaged being that hadn’t been smart enough to escape when it could.

Bab-Lin made to go to the edge of the town, taking a path opposite to the direction the shadow lord was heading, when Aira grabbed his arm.

“Is that who I think it is?” She pointed to a roof past the shadow lord.

Bab-Lin saw nothing at first, but then he noticed what Aira had noticed.

Phule, crouched on top of one of the buildings, grasping the struggling body of the shining bird of dark direction. She looked particularly frustrated and a little scared.

Bab-Lin waved his cane-club in her direction when her eyes happened to be glancing over.

Phule almost opened her mouth to shout something, but then thought better of it.

“It definitely appears to be Phule”

“She has the bird too!” Aira said happily.

Aira continued more sombrely “I don’t think she’s making her way over here, seems to be having some trouble with that bird”

“Let’s make our way over then”

Bab-Lin and Aira picked their way over the ragged roof. Coming to the edge Bab-Lin wondered how he was going to get Aira across to the next roof, he could just walk through air with his magic boots, but Aira didn’t have anything like that.

Aira solved the problem by simply leaping over the gap. Bab-Lin was glad he hadn’t voiced his concern. Checking where the shadow lord was, it was still headed away from them, Bab-Lin jumped onto little black disks that appeared beneath his boots and got across. They made their way across two more rooftops with no incident. Bab-Lin was beginning to get hopeful, perhaps good deeds brought fortune, he mused.

They arrived at the rooftop Phule was at. She excitedly waved to them. That was where it all began to go wrong. The hand she had used to wave at them had previously been employed in holding the beak of the shining bird of dark direction’s beak closed. Now with its beak free, Aira, Bab-Lin and Phule could only watch and listen in horror as the spirit made its displeasure known.

Loudly.

“I say! Unhand me this instant, you filthy wretch! My feathers are far too fine for the like of you pawing over them. Where do you get off, keeping hold of me? I am a spirit of some distinction I’ll have you know!”

Aira’s song had breathed life and remembrance into the caged beings, reminding them of who they were. It appeared that in the case of the shining bird of dark direction, it was a pompous loudmouth.

Phule clapped her hand over the bird’s beak, but it was far too late.

-I HEAR YOU- the shadow lord cried out triumphantly.

Aira, Phule and Bab-Lin ran in the direction of the town outskirts. They did not even clear the roof they were on. The shadow lord loomed in front of them as they reached the edge of the roof.

-I SEE YOU- He hissed.

Phule had let go of the bird’s beak.

“Well, look what you’ve done now! Brought the shadow lord down on us. Serves you all right!” he crowed smugly.

“I don’t suppose this counts as a betrayal does it? You are the one who alerted him by blathering away” Bab-Lin snarled at the bird.

“Sadly not, me being stupid doesn’t count” he replied, not sounding particularly repentant.

The shadow lord began to give a creepy chuckle as its glaring white eyes locked onto Aira.

Eyes with a small taint of yellow to them.