by Eric Vall
“Where?” she asked in confusion.
“I have someone to introduce you to, and if we’re lucky, he’ll be able to help you with the tranquilizers.”
“A healer?” she clarified. “I don’t feel comfortable trusting just anyone with something like this, Mason. If one thing goes wrong … ”
“He used to be a healer,” I explained when she joined me at the doors. “Deya, while we’re gone, could you look through your book of runes and find me something that can create a powerful force of air and propel it in only one direction?”
Deya nodded diligently and turned to her bookshelf, and I took Shoshanne by the hand to lead her out of the house and down the lanes of the village.
We walked at a clipped pace, the prospect of heading to Mors Pass by evening egging me on, and when we came to the pub, Shoshanne eyed me skeptically.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her and held the door for the woman. “From what I hear, he’s got more than enough experience to help us out. Plus, you love dwarven wine.”
Inside the pub, Raynor was just finishing serving up some fresh plates of food to a table of young mages who looked worn out from their morning of training, and he promptly smiled and nodded in my direction before heading straight for the barrel of ale behind the counter.
“That won’t be necessary,” I told him with a grin. “I need one glass of wine and a moment of your time, is all.”
Raynor looked vaguely confused behind his usual smile, but he obliged me, and when he brought Shoshanne’s wine over to the deserted table in the corner where I’d planted her, he bowed his respect to the caramel beauty.
Then I offered him a seat between us and lowered my voice once he sat down.
“Kurna told me you studied at the Order of Pallax for many years,” I began, and Raynor’s expression sobered. “I know you gave up healing when you came to the Oculus, but you must know a lot after your time there.”
The man shrugged noncommittally.
“You studied at the Order of Pallax, too?” Shoshanne asked with pleasant surprise. “How long ago?”
“Been about fifteen years, I suppose,” he told her hoarsely. “Don’t know much about the newer remedies.”
“Shoshanne’s an Aer Mage as well,” I explained, “and the best healer in Illaria, in my opinion. We’re working on a means of saving the mages, like you heard me mention before, but we’ve hit a wall in that department I hoped you might be able to help us with.”
Raynor kneaded his shaky hands and didn’t look too confident about the idea.
“If she’s the best healer,” he rasped, “you’re better off sticking with her advice rather than mine--”
“That’s just the thing,” Shoshanne countered, and she placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “I need the advice of someone who has more experience than me. I’ve been trying to find a plant that could serve as a tranquilizer. Nothing that can cause lasting internal damage, and it can’t be so strong that accidental death is possible since I won’t be the one administering it directly. It does need to be potent enough to be effective in very small doses, though. We plan to lace the tips of darts with it, but so far, I haven’t found anything in all of my reading.”
Raynor furrowed his brow. “There’s the Beletesium bloom,” he mused. “Grows in the jungles--”
“Yes, that’s where we got the idea from,” Shoshanne replied, “but we didn’t bring any back from Nalnora with us. We need something readily available here in Illaria.”
“Well,” Raynor said hoarsely, “it’ll be the slow hour in here real soon. I’ve got a shipment of ale to pack away still, but when I finish with that, I could see what my own books might have to say about it. Got ‘em up in my rooms, I could bring ‘em down.”
“How much ale?” I asked.
“Fifty barrels worth,” he replied. “Just come in with Bagneera. Don’t wanna leave ‘em stacked in the sun too long.”
“I’ve got a guy who can handle the shipment for you,” I told him as I stood. “You two just focus on that tranquilizer.”
“Yes, sir,” Raynor chuckled, and his smile returned with a nod as he rose to head for the stairs at the far corner of the pub. “Be back in a moment, miss.”
I stooped and left a kiss on Shoshanne’s lips, and I grinned as I slid the wine a bit closer. “Enjoy your wine and let me know when you come up with something. I’ll get the barrels handled and be back at the shop.”
The healer smirked and lifted her glass, and I sent her a wink from the door before I headed to the training fields.
I had sent my new squire Jenik to shadow Aurora after our meeting with the Defenders so he could get a leg up on his magery, and I found him listening intently while she held her palm out in front of her. I could hear the half-elf explaining her process as the orb of flames in her hand shifted from amber to blue, and then to white and back again.
“Mind if I borrow my squire?” I asked her with a grin.
Aurora smirked. “He’s your squire. He’s doing really well out here today, by the way. He’s already creating individual flames in ringlets. I was just showing him how to adjust the temperature to create different qualities of light.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I assured her. “How are the rest of the mages doing?”
“These Defenders you sent me are really helping out,” she reported, and I looked around the field to see the mages split into smaller groups with many of them joined in circuits with their new instructors.
“Excellent,” I said with a nod. “We’re leaving town tonight if I can manage to finish my work in time, so I wanted them to get an idea about what you’re up to before we leave the mages in their hands for a day.”
“A man named Urn told me you were crazy,” she informed me with an amused glance. “I take it this spontaneous trip has something to do with that?”
“It’s a surprise, but you’ll probably love it and giggle a bit, too.”
Aurora rolled her eyes, but she was chuckling to herself as I brought Jenik with me and headed for the marketplace. When we came around the back of the pub to find two giant stacks of barrels waiting, the kid’s eager smile finally fell.
“I need you to get this ale moved into the cellar of the pub,” I told him. “Raynor’s working on something for me, but it’d be a shame to let good dwarven ale spoil in the sun.”
“I’m moving barrels?” Jenik asked in disappointment. “How is that gonna help me train to be a knight?”
“Every decent knight knows his way around a barrel of ale,” I informed him. “Think of it as exercise. It’ll get that upper body bulking out a bit. Go easy on your back, though, and when you finish here, come by the shop. You can get a look at some of the weaponry you’ll be practicing with over the next few months.”
This cheered the kid up considerably, and he swiftly set to work on the first of many barrels.
I could already hear Raynor rasping away with Shoshanne while they sorted through his private collection of books, and when I returned to the house, Deya was perched on the work table waiting for me.
“Any luck?” I asked as I casually pulled her legs around me.
“Yes,” the elf giggled, and she playfully pushed me away with a warning look. Then she pulled the open book on the table closer to us. “This one harnesses three separate elements, but the text says the airflow only goes in one direction. All you have to do is angle this end of the degree line in the direction you require and position the rest of the elements according to the design. It mentions something about the thickness of this line, so I imagine that influences the amount of pressure.”
“This day couldn’t be going any better,” I sighed as I grinned and studied the rune more closely. It did look simple enough to work through on my own, and if it functioned as seamlessly as Deya suggested, it would be all I needed to complete the snatcher, so long as Raynor and Shoshanne could find a tranquilizer in time.
“Good,” Deya replied, and she hopped down before her slender
thighs could distract me any further. “I will be with Ruela in the forest. She needs to hunt.”
“Got your dagger?” I checked as she headed for the door.
The elf turned and flashed a sheath that was already flush against her toned hip, and as my eyes naturally began to drift lower, she giggled and abruptly flickered out of sight.
I sighed and shook my head before I turned my gaze back to my work and tried to bring my attention along with it.
The leather wrap Dragir had given me was stowed in the ammunition cabinet under the worktable, and I pulled it out to unroll it beside the book of runes.
If this rune worked as well as I expected, I could emulate the barebones, manual blow guns I’d seen a dozen times on Earth. So, I sparked my metal magic to form two identical slender pipes from a chunk of steel, and I lined up the spring mount of the magazines with an inlet that I cut into the back end of each one.
With an idea of where the darts would load in the tubing, I pulled the engraving tool out of the leather wrap and studied the rune more closely. Dragir had warned me to be particularly cautious of lining my runes up properly on the degree mapping I’d memorized, and I really didn’t want my first solo attempt to cause any explosions or turn the air around me into poisonous gas or anything like that.
So, I took longer than I felt I probably needed to gauge the degree markings against the mapping in my mind, and as I familiarized myself with each element I would be harnessing, I tried to block out the many sounds that were making the process nearly impossible. The last time I’d created a rune, I didn’t have my own runes branded into my arm yet, but now I couldn’t imagine how the elves ever managed to get anything done. Every cough, heartbeat, rattling cart, stomp of a hoof, and literally everything else came back to me all at once, and I worked to narrow my scope as much as I could while also attempting to focus on the elements.
Once I had a tentative grasp on the task, I placed the tip of the engraving tool against the metal of the blow gun and slowly began summoning the first element. I was thoroughly frustrated when ten minutes passed with no success, but after a few more irritating attempts, I finally heard the whisper of an element sifting around me as the air grew thick with it.
I turned my focus to this shred of success and held onto the presence of the element like a vice until I managed to harness its full potential. Then, with the rune blaring in my mind’s eye, I slowly began to move the engraving tool across the metal.
I did this for all three elements, which took way longer than I would have liked, but by the time the elements found a balance in the metal and began to settle at last, I felt more confident with the process despite the added difficulty of my enhanced hearing.
I took a few steadying breaths and rubbed my temples before attempting the same rune on the second blow gun, but I shaved a few minutes off my time on this one, which was enough of an improvement for me. Maybe I could design a pair of noise cancelling headphones for myself. That’d be something this realm had never even begun to imagine the application of, but with my malleable steel for the ear pads, it seemed like a decent solution if I was going to be engraving more runes in the future.
Which I damn sure would be if this worked out.
I grinned and admired the sleek rune etched identically into the base of the two blow guns just behind where the butt of the darts would line up. My first instinct was to test their function of course, but my next thought was how the hell was I supposed to do this?
The runes on the bazookas were trigger rigged, but these were not, and since they would be mounted onto the snatcher’s arms and not in his hands, this posed a problem.
So, I sat back for a moment and thought more carefully through the concept.
My own runes functioned relatively in response to my will because they were on my skin. I was their home and therefore could adjust how their elements were accessed, if I kept practicing with it. If this concept applied similarly to the sentry, then with the blow guns fused directly to his own body, the intentions set by the channeling gem should influence the rune similarly. As long as the sentry was made aware of the rune, I would hopefully be able to teach him to access the power of it at his own command to propel the darts.
Still, I needed to be sure the power of the rune had fused with the metal at all, and the notion immediately reminded be of the pedals Dragir made for the Mustang. When he’d handed them to me, I seeped into each pedal in turn and was able to figure out what the two runes were created to do by the way they interacted within the metal.
So, I sparked my metal magic at once and picked up one of the blow guns, and as I seeped into the steel, I immediately sensed the presence of the rune. It was starkly familiar since I’d created this one myself, and I recognized not only the individual elements, but the overall effect of its power as well. It was wispish like the wind in some ways, but also eager, and I could hear the rune holding back a force of strength as if the reins were taut at the ready.
I grinned and checked to be sure the second blow gun sounded identical to the first, and I was just sorting through the familiar elements in turn when my ears picked up a sound that sent me to my feet.
Someone was trying to scream but fighting against whoever kept their attempt muffled, and my heart shot to my throat as I immediately scanned the entire forest for my women.
Chapter 18
Everyone was accounted for, and Deya was with Ruela nearly a mile in the opposite direction of the screams that were slowly fading into gasps. Big Guy was patrolling still and just rounding the furthest eastern border of Falmount, but the struggle taking place was not far off from me in the western woods.
I bolted out of the house and kept my ears trained as I pulled out my revolver and followed the direction of a low chuckle that made my skin crawl, and my pulse quickened when I realized whoever tried to scream wasn’t fighting back anymore.
I could hear five heartbeats ahead, and the telltale sound of flames lapping against something. With my magic sparked, I quickly found the iron rod and sensed the heat it had already gathered at one end, and with a furious surge of my powers, I tore the branding rod out of the mage’s hand. It flew right past me in a flash of glowing iron on its way to the shop, but I didn’t slow my pace.
The mages ahead were angrily scrambling and cursing one another, and just as I broke through a line of nettles, I cocked the revolver.
One mage dropped on the spot as the bullet pierced his skull, but another tore the ground apart directly in front of me, and I barely managed to catch my balance at the edge of a gaping trench with jagged spikes at the bottom.
Without a thought, I summoned every one of the spikes and threw them at the three mages in front of me, and only two of them managed to escape the attack. The Aer Mage took a rocky spear to the chest and fell beside the dead Flumen Mage, but the Terra and Ignis Mages bared their teeth furiously as both summoned their powers at once.
I fired a second too late, my bullet meeting with a wall rather than the Terra Mage’s face, and I only barely blocked the searing jet of flames coming my way in time. I crouched behind the wall now being battered with angry flames, and I could see the ankles of whoever their victim had been. The exposed leg looked mangled at the ankle, but I couldn’t see a rune yet.
I hoped I wasn’t too late as I felt through the dirt for the Terra Mage first, and I found him sneaking around the flames with his palms at the ready.
I couldn’t drop my wall to shoot while the Ignis Mage kept up the relentless jet that had me sweating bullets already from the heat, but maybe I could at least take on the Terra Mage while the other was distracted.
The only problem was the leaden weight beginning to press down around me, and I gritted my teeth as I realized my rune was already coming into action. I could hear a low and gurgling groan coming from the mage they’d attacked, and as the Terra Mage climbed up a boulder only three feet beyond my wall, I felt the perilous force the man began to press against my powers with.
&nbs
p; There was no doubting he had the strength to counter my Terra Magic, no matter what I did, and as the runes swelled furiously, I finally shook my head to myself.
“Fuck it,” I growled, and I dropped the wall as the rune took over.
The searing flames engulfed me just as I pulled the trigger, but the burning was short lived. With the Ignis Mage’s heartbeat in my mind, my bullet met its mark, and before the flames ceased entirely, I’d already dropped and rolled behind another wall while simultaneously uprooting the boulders where the Terra Mage was.
I brought them crashing down, only to sense them crumbling to dust before they could do any damage, and despite the pillar I sent up beneath his feet, the man dodged my attacks at lightning speed.
My skin was blistered all over, and my rune swarmed in my mind with a vengeance, but when I heard the whir of Big Guy’s tracks already advancing this way, I turned my focus to the wall behind me that was slowly collapsing with the force of the possessed mage’s power.
With a surge of my Terra magic, I blasted the wall apart rather than let the last mage crush me with it, and as the rubble scattered in every direction, I saw his cryptic grin coming my way, and his palms were raised and at the ready.
I cocked the revolver at the same moment the ground beneath me split open, and I’d just caught myself on the edge of the gaping trench when an arrow suddenly impaled the Terra Mage directly between the eyes.
Big Guy came to a thunderous stop beside the trench, and I felt his giant hands catch me beneath the arms before I was wrenched upward and set down on the ground again.
I quickly crawled to the body of the mage they’d attacked, and my gut nearly dropped through my ass when I saw Pindor strewn across the ground.
His face was deathly pale, and water was trickling from his slack lips.
Without hesitating, and despite the pain blistering in my hands and arms, I started performing CPR to force the rest of the Flumen Mage’s water out of the kid’s lungs. When he finally gave a violent jolt and rolled to vomit the rest of it up, I dropped back across the ground in relief.
