Page 94 of Requiem of Silence

Next to her, Pia let out what sounded like a Raunian curse. “What dark magic is this?”

Jasminda tried in vain to arrest the progress of the spirits emerging from the portal. Oola had said She’d trapped them in a cage of pure life energy, but they were moving so fast and Jasminda didn’t even manage to catch one.

Shaking off their shock, her Guardsmen tightened around her. But there was nothing the men could do to protect her. They were all just potential victims.

“We need to get you back to the vehicles,” Captain Bareen, her lead Guardsman, said.

Pia’s people formed a knot around her to protect their king. But as they all hurried down the cobblestones, one of Jasminda’s Guardsmen was speared by a column of black smoke and transformed into a large woman with strange markings on her neck.

The woman didn’t speak, she didn’t attack. She merely stopped walking and stood there, staring into space. The wraith inhabiting the body of the dockworker was the same. They stood locked in place as if waiting for something.

Guardsmen pulled Jasminda away and back toward the street.But Captain Bareen paused; his reluctance to leave one of his men behind flowed to her via Earthsong.

“Captain!” she cried. He shook off his reticence and returned to her side.

“If they can be saved, we will do so,” she said, as they hustled up the ramp leading to the street.

As people screamed and ran for safety, those who had been transformed were rigid as statues. If they were indeed awaiting orders, she certainly did not want to be here when they came through.

Finally, the bombinating swarm in the sky cleared. How many spirits had come down to overtake people and find hosts? A hundred, perhaps more? Jasminda and her entourage were almost to the line of vehicles waiting on the main street when a loud screech rang out, vibrating her bones.

The conspicuously motionless people within her field of view had apparently received their instructions. As one they started moving. Fast.

The woman who’d entered the Guardsman’s body raced up the ramp at superhuman speed and grabbed a retreating soldier. She easily picked up the man off his feet—he must have been double her weight—and tossed him away like a sack of trash.

Jasminda’s other Guards and Pia’s people grabbed their weapons. A Raunian woman gripped a pistol and let loose the first shots that ripped through the spirit woman’s body, but the bullets did not slow her one whit. Captain Bareen cursed.

Jasminda shook off the Guardsman who clutched her arm and steadied herself, focusing her power. She pushed a blast of wind at the wraith to knock her off her feet. When the woman got up again, Jasminda hardened the air around her, locking the creature in place.

Her attention turned to others around her, fighting off attacking spirits, and to screams in the distance from people she could not see. But the wraith woman struggled against the invisible bands holding her in place and broke through. Jasminda spun around just in time to catch her as she targeted another guard. An Earthsong fireball didn’t stop the creature, who showed no sign of damage from the flames. Jasminda used wind to pick her up and toss her away, but the wraith scrambled onto her feet again and charged.

Finally, Jasminda opened up a hole beneath the creature’s feet, causing her to fall in. Then she quickly refilled it with dirt. She could sense the wraith clawing through the dirt, making her way back to the surface, and dug the hole even deeper, sinking her farther.

Across the street, a sandy-haired teenage boy was smashing the window of a butcher shop with unnatural strength. Its frightened owner stood inside, two long knives in his grip. Jasminda tried to hold the boy in place as she had the woman, but he fought the invisible bonds. She tightened them, pressing the air around him tightly until they finally held.

Down the street, bullets rang out ineffectually as a constable tried to defend himself against an attacker. The wraith didn’t appear to feel them, perhaps because he was already dead. But it was the fate of the ones whose bodies had been overtaken that Jasminda worried about.

One thing at a time though. She worked to disable and trap all those who’d overtaken bodies within her field of vision, but it was too few, as she well knew. Fighting each one was a strain on her Song.

Screams sounded to her right and she turned, scared that King Pia would be overrun and she would have an international assassination on her hands. The king’s people had pulled her farther away; Jasminda was shocked to find Pia holding her own againstthe wraiths. A group of five had converged on the Raunian entourage, who were successfully fighting them.

Raunian weapons were just as ineffectual as Elsiran guns, but the men and women themselves were able to take on the super-strong wraiths hand to hand. Pia got in a good punch on a man easily twice her size, who went down hard. Within moments, only the Raunians were left standing with an assortment of unconscious wraiths at their feet.

The Guardsmen hustled an amazed Jasminda into her vehicle and Pia and her crew fell into theirs. Captain Bareen slid into the passenger seat. “We’ll get you back to the palace as quickly as possible, Your Majesty.”

“No, we need to drive through the streets. I can help.” The look on his face was troubled. “I’ll be safer in the car than out there, but I can’t hide away. Not when no one can defend themselves.” No one except the Raunians, apparently.

He shook his head and let out a breath, but commanded the driver to take them down Bishop Street. A voice on the radio announced the rest of their party was headed back to the palace, and Jasminda was grateful, hopeful they’d make it there safely.

The first street was quiet, but when they turned the corner, a melee was in progress. With her Song, the wraiths felt different, she couldn’t sense them as she could normal people. They were quieter somehow. No emotion came from them, not even rage. However, they did have a spark of life energy left, possibly from the host, and she used that to distinguish who was alive and who was a wraith.

She restrained the spirits she encountered as best she could, holding them in place or burying them under layers of dirt, cobblestone, or cement—she could think of no other way to stop them. But soon,the weight of all the spells began to wear on her. The strength of her targets beat against her strength and she wished she was better at wielding the power Oola had given her.

Darvyn’s lessons came to mind and she struggled to manage and distribute her power in so many places the way he’d taught her. Though she was tiring, she wanted to do more, but if she was incapacitated, all her spells would fail and the wraiths she held under her power would be free to continue wreaking havoc.

The intersection up ahead was blocked by a crash, and fires had sprung up on several blocks. Everywhere she looked there were injured people, those she could not spare much energy to heal as well as keep the wraiths in place.

“It looks like the attack is centered in Portside, Your Majesty,” Bareen said, tapping the radio. “There were minimal sightings of those… things, east of Earl Place.”

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