Chapter 24. CHAOS

  Two days later, while Willow, Briar, Greer, and the other mages, slept off four days of hiking in our desert outpost, I sat at a table and nursed a strong-brewed coffee.

  I’d slept little the night before, tossing and turning and achy due to fever, but now I couldn’t sleep if I tried. My body felt sore, and the wound in my side had reared its head again as I tried to sleep, pain searing my body in a way that felt even worse than before. But it wasn’t just physical.

  After leaving Ehren behind and seeing mages enslaved for their spell casting, anger burned in my chest, hot and brutal. Beyond the physical aches and pains, and the mental anguish I felt, the consequences of our actions hadn’t been pretty in Vale.

  Pockets of resistance all around the city had gone on high alert when we shared information about the existence of The Factory, the enslavement of mages, Uof’s grand castle up in the mountains, as well as young Ehren’s capture.

  Our friends and allies spread what we’d learned in the pubs and markets and now the city was abuzz. The ranks of the resistance swelled as family and friends and those who’d been on the fence before, now joined up and offered to help us in any way they could to recover young Ehren and fight back.

  At the same time, we heard reports of bands of armed thugs roaming the streets, searching buildings, interrogating suspected resistance members, and seeking us out with every resource at their disposal. The Motorized sent out their most well-trained soldiers for regular, consistent, and organized marches through the streets, either as a show of force, or to track down some specific lead about the resistance.

  Dirk and I expected that Ehren would eventually break, tortured to the point of giving up the locations of our hidden bases and secret tunnels in the city, and even the location of this desert outpost. So, we’d moved the majority of our operations to the desert outpost, and we pushed everyone to remain vigilant.

  Upon waking up, I’d heard the report that Bend and Shade spent the previous night distracting bands of thugs by casting spells away from resistance shelters and sending their attention toward other false leads. They lit up magic detectors all over the city. They launched balls of light and sent them rising above neighborhoods at varying times, some of which would stay lit for many hours. Small explosions lit the air here or there and chaos reigned in the city. These distractions added to the general feeling that something had changed. Citizens whispered in the markets about a gathering army of mages on the prowl in Vale, though of course, this was far from the truth.

  Seeing so many spells being cast openly in the city was something that hadn’t happened in decades—so the Motorized seemed shocked. This sent Vale’s disorganized thugs into a frenzy of confusion, reacting to reports radically and irrationally. Patrols whisked through the city from one location to another, and our reports told us that Uof’s men had begun to appear sweaty, tired, and wide-eyed.

  Dirk entered the main room of the outpost where I sat, and dropped himself heavily into another chair at the table.

  “Have you slept?” I asked him.

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  “Not a wink,” he said. “The city talks about you this morning, especially with what’s happened overnight. Rumors about The Factory and about you, Mage, as well as our young Ehren, have spread to every corner of Vale. Of course, we’re starting most of these rumors, but new stories seem to crop up on their own. The day is looking bright, mage. Volunteers are joining with the resistance throughout the city. I’m not sure anyone slept last night.”

  “Are Bend and Shade done?”

  “For now, yes,” he said looking back to the bunkhouse. “They are getting some rest too.”

  “These volunteers…,” I began.

  “I know, we’re going about this carefully,” Dirk interrupted. “We’re putting off new volunteers for the moment until everything calms down, but we have lists of those who want to join us, new resistance fighters from every quarter of the city. We’ll gather them and begin to test them soon.”

  I nodded slowly, taking a drink of the dark, bitter coffee.

  “Have you spoken to the mages you freed yet?”

  “Not yet,” I replied. “I’m giving them time. I need time.”

  We sat there for a moment, and I held the warm wooden cup of coffee between my hands, watching the steam rise. My own thoughts for the past few hours had centered around the Factory and the mages chained to machines. We’d gotten eight of them out, and I had so many questions to ask them. But they needed to recover first, and so did I.

  Beyond that, there were so many more still chained up at the Factory, somehow we would need to add them to our number. If we could that, this war started to look winnable.

  Of course, we had to rescue Ehren too. We needed to bring in the new volunteers quickly, train them as best we could in a short time, and take advantage of the moment. And there, in the back of my mind, floated that spell I saw in The Factory. What did it really do?

  “Dirk, what do you think we should do next?” I asked, with a deep sigh.

  He laid his hands on the table and looked at me for a moment. I knew the feelings he wrestled with well?—?I’d felt some semblance of them in every city where I’d encountered a resistance and fought against a motorized government of some kind. While this was different in every possible way, the tensions were similar.

  “I am of two minds?—?my thoughts are on Ehren?—?they will torture him for information if our past experience is any guide,” he said, his head down. “And while I would like to get him back right away, I also know that our focus should be on The Factory. How does it work and how do we stop it? We’ve known that Uof had been persecuting Mages for decades. We didn’t realize that Uof had imprisoned and tortured some of those mages, which shows him to be the hypocrite we always knew he was. If what you described about the machines is accurate, they enslave mages to power their machinery. This changes everything. If we can rescue all of them, perhaps we will have the army we need to overthrow Vale.”

  He stopped for a moment, and I waited, watching his face.

  “To think of the real possibility that we could face an age without Uof, is…” he fumbled for the words, his eyes welling up. “We could create a new government for the people of Vale. We could rid the world of these thugs who seek power over people, find peace between The Motorized and The Way. But… he won’t give up easily.”

  He stopped himself, shaking his head.

  “What am I saying?” Dirk wiped his eyes. “He still has an iron grip on this world, and we’re leagues away from wresting it from his grasp. Honestly, we’ve attacked them multiple times now, and I think a storm is coming.”

  He stopped and I nodded.

  “My thoughts run similar to yours Dirk,” I said. “Everyone is going to need rest after this, but we can’t wait to act or Uof will get the upper hand. Let’s form a plan of our own tonight, together.”

  Suddenly, the door burst open and a young woman from Dirk’s fighters entered the room, sweaty and out of breath. She’d obviously just run a long distance.

  “Uof is going to appear!” she nearly shouted, when she’d finally caught her breath. “They’re putting the word out?—?he’s coming into the city.”