Free The Vitalis Chronicles: White Shores by Jay Swanson Page A

glass. It was lit well by a few diodes and fixtures, standing in stark contrast to the dark chamber.
    Inside the capsule was the suspended figure of a woman, floating silently in clear fluid, apparently asleep. Her arms appeared bound behind her back while her wild silver hair fanned out lazily from her head in almost every direction. A tube from the floor of the container ran up to a mask that was bound around the lower part of her face, covering her nose and mouth. Her clothing, slowly reduced to rags over decades of dissolution, floated loosely around her body revealing smooth, pale white skin beneath. Despite the silver-white hair, she didn't appear very old to Ardin.
    He approached the capsule silently, enraptured. Little lights on the fixtures holding the capsule in place flickered on and off as if a subconscious afterthought. The warm humming had been left behind. The silence was only broken intermittently by the hissing of some small valve releasing pressure in the darkness.
    He closed on the cage, his heart drumming so loudly in his ears he was certain it would wake the woman behind the glass. She must be alive if they were coming for her, he thought. She was enchanting; if no other power made itself manifest, her intoxicating presence would have been enough for Ardin to have thought of her as a witch. But she was far more lovely than the witches his brother had ever told him about in story.
    Above the glass, bolted into the arms that held the capsule from the ceiling, was a plate with writing etched into it. Some was small, generic military information and serial numbers. In large print between the lines of almost illegible dribble it read “ CHARSI ” and below in slightly smaller letters “ CONDEMNED: MAGE. ” His eyes drifted back down to her figure, floating peacefully in the water. Was she drugged?
    He reached out, unable to pull his hand back and unwilling to do so in any case. The glass was slanted away from him, as if the whole capsule had rocked backwards some time before. He could almost see himself in the glass as his fingers gently brushed the surface.
    Her eyes opened.

    G ENERAL TROY SILVERS stepped into the clearing at the Cave, the crack battalion of his division standing at attention in the valley behind him. He knew he didn't need them, not for this at least, though they had been useful in containing the villagers from Levanton. A gentle white mist wandered with a sense of curiosity through the wild grasses that roamed freely around the clearing.
    Silvers grit his teeth mindlessly as he stared up the path towards the dark ramshackle building. It had been a long time since he'd crossed paths with the Magess. He wasn't looking forward to it. Partially because he didn't know what to expect; partially because he did.
    She'd been imprisoned here a long time now. Perhaps not by her reckoning but certainly by the humans who had contained her here a generation before. Their neglect in maintaining the place was rearing its costly head.
    “Sir.” The gaunt colonel appeared at his elbow. “Are you certain you do not want an escort into the building, sir?”
    “I'll be fine, Colonel.”
    “Not even your own weapon, sir?”
    Silvers didn't respond. His cold gaze rested on the complex ahead, bathed in the shadow of the mountain. Weapons weren't any good here.
    An attached squad of engineers had cut the gates off the old fence for him, but had been remanded to the battalion. This was something he would do himself. Afterward he would have to let Brutus' demolition squad in to blow the place to bits, assuming there was anything left. It was necessary to satiate the battalion's hopes for explosions and quell the fears of the people, if for no other reason.
    There would be a high demand for certainty of the Witch's demise in the City.
    He would give them that.
    “How did she manage it sir?” The colonel's question disrupted his thoughts like waking from a dream.
    “What?”
    “If she's still here, I mean.