by Eric Vall
As I half-dragged the healer into the orchard, I could hear the horrible shriek of the fiery bird pierce the air, and I knew it was coming in for another attack. All I could do was pray they could keep it occupied long enough for me to make a weapon that could take it out.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Shoshanne when we were deep in the orchard, halfway to the fence.
“Do you remember when you helped me make titanium, creating a vacuum so it didn’t touch oxygen and get ruined?” I asked.
The healer nodded.
“I need you to do that again, okay, and hold it for as long as you can,” I explained.
“You’re making titanium again?” Shoshanne asked, confused.
“No,” I said as I sent out a wave of my magic through the orchard around me. “I’m making magnesium.”
“Oh,” said the Aer Mage as she looked around her and saw particles of light gray rise out of the ground like snowfall in reverse. “It’s pretty.”
“It’s explosive is what it is,” I explained as I kept my focus on the metal in the soil, and the clouds of gray began to coalesce into a ball in front of me. “Given enough concentration and a nice source of ignition, like that fire bird. Can you put the vacuum right here, around this ball?”
Shoshanne concentrated, and wind began to blow through her hair and around her robe. It was evident how much focus was needed, because the vortex around her grew more and more wild minute by minute.
I continued to pull in more and more metal and compressed it into a tighter ball. In the oxygen-free zone Shoshanne had created, it began to change color, going from light gray to silver.
I heard screams of man and bird beyond the trees, but I kept my focus tight, until at last, I had before me an object the size of a golf ball and as reflective as a mirror.
“Shoshanne, I need you to move the vacuum exactly where I move the ball,” I said in my calmest voice. I had explained to her the danger already, but I wanted to assure her it was under control.
Together, we walked out of the orchard back to the road, the ball in front of me, and the Aer Mage still enveloped in a whirlwind.
The scene before us was pure war. The last of the wagons was nothing more than a smoking skeleton of its frame. The firebird was on the ground and shrieked at the Terra Mages who surrounded it. They cast rocks and dirt at it from all sides, which disintegrated on impact but seemed to keep it agitated.
“Don’t come any closer, stay there,” I whispered to Shoshanne. “Just keep the vacuum moving with the ball until I tell you to release it, okay?”
“I-I don’t know how much longer I can hold it,” the Aer Mage gasped, her voice almost lost in the wind that whipped around her.
“Just like last time, you held it longer than you thought you could, remember?” I gently reminded her. She needed all the confidence I could give her right now.
With the ball still levitated in front of me, I stepped out into the road.
“I’m going to count to ten!” I called out to the mages as they battled the firebird. “On two, pull up shields of stone all around the bird except in front of me. On six, open the ground underneath it. On ten, seal the walls around you on all sides. Cayla, Aurora, Shoshanne, you’ll need to get in close to me. Yaxin, you and your men better get in close with one or more of the Terra Mages if you want to live. Everyone understand?”
Reactions varied, but I got the assurance I needed that all had heard me.
“One … two,” I began, and on cue, stone walls rose from the ground on all sides of the bird but mine.
“Three … four …”
The creature took a moment to look around, and then it turned its attention to me. It let out an angry squawk and took a step forward in my direction. Two steps, and it noticed the silver ball that I began to float closer to it.
“Five …”
It seemed to notice its own image in the ball and bristled, not sure what to make of it. Finally, it did what I waited for it do, and let out a shriek, its beak open wide. I pushed the ball down its throat with a burst of magic.
“Six!” I shouted, and the ground beneath the bird opened wide. It reacted with a flap of its wings and flew up into the air.
“Shoshanne, drop the vacuum!” I yelled.
Overhead, the sky turned bright white as the bird exploded.
“Oh shit! Seveneightnineten!”
Aurora, Shoshanne, and Cayla huddled around me as with a pulse of my power, I enveloped us all in a cocoon of stone.
From behind the walls, I could hear the muffled sound of explosions all around us. Then silence but for the crackle of flame. I gave it another minute before I opened a small crack in the rock and peeked out.
It looked as if we had been napalmed. There were fires everywhere, but they were clear, almost invisible, except where they touched a source of fuel like the branch of a tree or the remains of the traders’ wagons. The waves of heat were intense, immediately bringing a sheen of sweat to my face.
Besides me, there were nine stone mounds in the road of various sizes and no bodies, so it looked like everyone shielded themselves in time.
“Everyone out!” I shouted. “We got some fires to put out!”
As the mounds cracked open like eggs, Aurora joined me to survey the fires all around us.
“Now maybe we need a Flumen Mage,” the Ignis Mage said with a purse of her lips, “before we burn the orchard down.”
“No, water is the worst thing you can use on a magnesium fire,” I replied. “What we need is sand. Did you hear that, Terra Mages?”
“Yeah, we heard it, we heard it,” Haragh called back as he extracted himself from a shelter he had shared with two of the traders.
“We’re on it!” Pindor shouted as he climbed out of his shell.
Yaxin climbed out of the same barrier and checked on his men, while the Terra Mages began to shower the fires with clouds of sand. I turned to the three women with me as I let the rock around us crumble away.
“Everyone okay?” I asked.
“That was amazing,” Cayla said, her blue eyes wide. “You saved us all.”
“Aw shucks.” I grinned. “I couldn’t have done it without Shoshanne. It would have blown up right in my face.”
“Well, I’m glad it didn’t,” the Aer Mage said shyly as she slipped her fingers through her copper hair.
“Okay, okay, I believe you didn’t create that monster,” Yaxin said with a sigh as he joined us. “We tried to flood your train, and then you came over and saved us. What is there to say? Thank you? We owe you one?”
“How about you stop laying out traps for us?” I said with a grin. “That’d be a start.”
“You saw what happened to our wagons and all the goods we were carrying,” the trader grimaced. “Even if we were going to, which we aren’t, we can’t. Pretty much everything’s gone. My boss is going to have my hide.”
“We’re going to Pautua and then on to Eyton,” Cayla chimed in. “Why don’t you and your men join us? We could use some help loading and unloading tracks when our new shipment arrives. We could also use some look-outs while we do our work.”
“What if there are more of those … firebird things?” Yaxin replied cautiously.
“Then you’ll be happy you’re with people who can protect you,” I pointed out as I broke out my cockiest smile. “What do you have to lose at this point? Play your cards right, and I might set up an introduction with King Davit about you getting involved in the railroad project and trade.”
“You really could do that?” the trader asked with a trace of residual suspicion.
“Oh, yes he could,” Cayla held back a giggle. “He’s got a good ‘in’ with the king.”
“Well, that would be great,” Yaxin said and for the first time I saw a small, careful smile on his face. “Sorry about calling you a bitch the other day, miss.”
“Ah, don’t apologize for that,” the princess said with a wicked grin. “That’s the only thing you’ve been
right about this whole time.”
That prompted the smile on the trader’s face to turn to an outright laugh.
The sand the Terra Mages used had made short work of the magnesium fires, so there was nothing more that we needed to do but walk back through the orchard to the train. I opened the door to the empty car the locomotive and ushered Yaxin and his men inside. Shoshanne ran to the locomotive and came back with her parcel of medical gear.
“There are some burns and cuts I should attend to,” the healer explained. “Yaxin, maybe you can keep an eye on the windows to the east in case of trouble?”
“Me and my men won’t even blink,” the trader assured her.
I joined the rest of the group in the locomotive, and everyone got ready. Aurora started up the engine, the Terra Mages joined their magic to make our path southward smooth, and I took a deep breath. Then, with a flex of my power, I began to levitate tracks and ties ahead of us.
Within five miles, we were in open country, the orchards and fields of crops behind us. This was the ranch country Cayla had mentioned, grasslands populated by herds of cattle, sheep, and the occasional family of pigs and goats. I kept focused on my task to lay out tracks, but with so much livestock around, I thought again of Cayla’s culinary challenge. A bacon double cheeseburger might be just the invention this world needed.
Chapter 13
Cayla had described Pautua as nothing more than a little village, and at first, I thought she had sold the place short because it took up a lot of space. It seemed like a vast oasis of civilization in the middle of miles of open grassland. A sleepy little creek ran through it, bordered by willow trees which powered a mill, and slaughterhouses, dairies, and stockyards were everywhere.
Of course, it didn’t take long for me to register that they were all nearly empty.
The heart of the town also seemed to go on, block after block of shops, saloons, churches, and residences, but again, the windows were dark and no one was in. The sound of our train’s arrival usually brought out all the townsfolk in the places we passed, but only a few dozen Pautuans came out as we slowed to a halt.
“It’s a boom town during the annual cattle drives,” the princess explained. “The rest of the year, it’s almost a ghost town.”
The Baron of Pautua was among those who came to greet us. He was an elderly man, but quite finely dressed, and though he walked with a cane, it immediately sang to me that it was made of gold. I shook his hand as our group jumped down from the locomotive, and Yaxin’s men came out of the smaller car.
“Welcome, welcome to Pautua, the queen of the cattle towns,” the baron said grandly, though his voice shook with age. “We hope you have a long and happy stay. Is today Tuesday? If it’s Tuesday, there’s a special at the Frog and Eagle Pub on Olive Street. Steak!”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s Tuesday or not, dear,” the old woman next to him, also richly attired, chimed in. “It’s always steak at the Frog and Eagle.”
“I do like steak,” I replied with a grin. “Maybe we’ll go there for a bite after we’ve built Pautua’s train station.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” the baron shrugged. “We don’t need one. I had one last Thursday. Why eat seafood when you can have a nice steak?”
“Station, dear, not crustacean,” the baroness corrected him kindly before she turned to me with a quizzical expression. “Although … what is a station exactly?”
“It’s a stop for trains like this,” I explained as best I could as I gestured to the locomotive behind me. “It’s a means of transportation that the kings of Illaria and Cedis commissioned be made. Your people will be able to ferry their livestock quickly throughout both kingdoms, and other regions can send their goods here as well, much faster and safer than on the road.”
“How much faster?” the old woman asked, suddenly all business.
“Once everything is laid out, the trains will be going about thirty miles an hour at the least,” I replied and waited for her reaction.
“And then what happens after the hour?” the baroness asked suspiciously.
“It goes another thirty miles an hour,” I said patiently. “Until it reaches its destination. So, for example, your cattle could be in the capitol in about three hours.”
“Three hours?” the old woman gasped, and she looked like she was about to faint. “Sign us up!”
The Terra Mages were at my side right away, ready to begin work. Seeing that this town would be transporting some large animals, we began the station with a long, gentle ramp which led in the direction of the stockyards. Because the product was likely to be a large animal, an open air platform like we made in Keld seemed like the way to go. Instead of a double slanted roof, though, to change things up, we created a series of gables.
While we raised up the gray and red gneiss bedrock to create the station, I became aware of activity all around us. Men on horseback galloped out of town at speeds I didn’t expect from such a sleepy little hamlet in its off-season.
Once the basic station was set up, I sent a wave of my power to the remaining tracks in the locomotive and set them into place. Then I set up a pair of rail switches in the front with the assumption that some of the merchandise coming on or off would be slow-moving, and we didn’t want a back up on the tracks.
It took a few hours for everything to be perfect, and then it got a little more perfect.
We heard from the north a familiar sound of a train engine, and when we turned we found there was not one, not two, but three of our cars on the track to join us.
I whooped and ran to meet them as they rolled to a stop. Korion and Bagnera both jumped out of the first car.
“I told you you’d get a hug if you brought me three full cars,” I grinned, and then I gave the poor kid a crushing bear hug.
“Well, I hope I get one too, dear,” said Bagnera with a giggle that belied her age.
“Of course,” I said as I embraced her a bit gentler than I had Korion. “You decided to come along and not go back to Magehill?”
“Well, when I brought two full cars and saw they had filled up another one at Durch, I did a little math in my head,” the white-haired Ignis Mage said with a grin. “Isn’t that just exactly what you need to get to Eyton?”
“Why, yes it is,” I said with a smile, “and you’d like to see us set up the terminal station there?”
“Do I need an invitation?” Bagnera asked, tickled.
I laughed and when I turned, I saw Yaxin and his men as they walked toward us.
“You still want us to transfer the tracks and ties into the what’s-it-called, the biggest one that you ride in?” the head trader asked.
“Locomotive,” I said and nodded. “Yes, as soon as possible so we can get going. You’ll need the Terra Mages with you. Those tracks weigh a ton each. The mages can use their power to leverage the tracks from car to car, and you and your men can help guide them.”
The traders and the Terra Mages got to work while I reunited the two Ignis Mages with the rest of our party. As we talked, the Baron and Baroness of Pautua joined us.
“I very much like this crustacean more than the one I had last Thursday,” the baron said happily. “So much less slimy!”
“I have good news, and I have bad news,” the baroness added, seriousness in her tone. “The good news is I’ve sent word to all the ranches and I expect they will be coming within the hour to admire your work. The bad news is the Frog and Eagle Pub is … out of steak.”
I held back a snicker out of politeness. “I’m afraid I will have to get that steak to go then the next time I’m in town. We really do need to be leaving if we want to get your connection completed to Eyton done in a timely manner.”
“Oh yes.” The baroness nodded vigorously, a flash of greed in her wrinkled eyes. “That does take priority. What’s slowing you up?”
I pointed to the trains at the station and the two dozen traders and mages who strained to move the tracks out of the back car and into the locom
otive. It was a slow and laborious process.
“Why, we’ll never get our three hour connection to Eyton at this rate,” the baroness grumbled and then turned to the townsfolk behind her. “I need every able-bodied man, woman, and child out there moving those tracks! Even some of you non-able-bodied ones! Quick!”
As I watched the baroness corral her people to assist the traders and mages, Cayla joined me.
“If that woman has anything to say about it, we’ll be out of here in five minutes,” the princess giggled.
“I assume that would be good with you,” I replied. “We’re almost to your home.”
“Yes, but there is something I’ve wanted to talk to you about,” Cayla said haltingly, uncharacteristically shy. “It has to do with that explosive you used on the fire bird.”
“I was lucky there,” I said modestly. “I had a huge supply of magnesium, more than I needed it turns out, and an Aer mage who could keep it stable until I could detonate it.”
“I’ve learned we can’t always count on luck,” Cayla replied seriously. “Do you think you could create a stable explosive about that size anyone could use, even a non-mage? There could be a standard for when it explodes, like on impact--?”
“Or maybe on a timer?” I grinned.
“You’re making fun of me,” Cayla stuck out her bottom lip.
“No, no, you’re a genius,” I chuckled and grabbed her hand. “Sweetheart, I told you, most of these things I’ve ‘invented,’ I’m just remembering from my time on another world. You’ve come up with the idea for what we call a grenade just from your imagination.”
“Do you think it can be done?” the princess asked, bright blue eyes wide.
“I’ll make sure of it,” I said and pulled her in for an embrace.
“Okay, that’s enough,” the baroness huffed twenty minutes later as she came up from the tracks. “You’re all loaded up. Best be off, hadn’t you?”
I was about to reply when I heard the sounds of shouting down at the tracks. A horrible feeling came over me about another fire beast attack, and I ran down to investigate with Cayla right behind me.
