by Frank Morin
“Rith, get us back to the square,” she shouted, turning them in that direction. Rith eagerly took control of their legs and they leaped into a fracked sprint back through town. “Ennlin, Nuzha, Hemma, see if you can slow the acid!” She raised her mini hub and twisted the keystone to Mistress Four’s speakstone. “Mistress Four, beware! Aonghus has turned the remaining acid against us.”
“You’re a second late,” Mistress Four responded, her voice calm, the sound of rushing wind loud through the connection.
Feeling relieved, Student Eighteen reached the square and slid to a halt. It was a mess, the entire expanse covered in bubbling acid. General Rosslyn and her remaining senior Petralists had been fighting back to back on the eastern edge, closer to the river. It looked like they were trying to reach the water to gain some advantage over the Mhortair. Only four remained besides the general. Three were Spitters and one a Sentry, all fleeing onto the river to escape the acid. General Rosslyn alone remained in the square, standing atop a glittering tower of water. Acid flowed nearby, but didn’t quite touch the tower.
That was impressive. Acid wasn’t a liquid Spitters could normally control, which was why the Mhortair had used the pressurized spray mechanicals to deliver it.
Rosslyn was scowling into the sky, looking after the Mhortair, who were all rising quickly away, driven by quartzite thrusters worked into their boots. They lacked the ability to fly like Hamish, but those thrusters provided enough lift to help them escape if the attack turned against them.
Small flying mechanicals swept in to intercept the fleeing Mhortair, with grab handles ready to pull them away to safety. Luckily most of the Mhortair teams seemed to have escaped. The square was littered with the remains of a lot of people, although the acid was already decomposing them, making identification impossible, but it looked like less than a third of their strike teams had died. Given the dangerous prey they hunted, those were good numbers.
Mistress Four glanced back down and met her gaze, releasing one of the handles to raise a fist in triumph. Their people had struck back at the enemy who had destroyed their home. Commander Six, his long whipsword dangling from his belt, was shouting a victory chant in Havaen.
The mechanicals carried them north, and Student Eighteen wished them a safe flight. They would drop back into the fighting near Ivor’s embattled Spitters, but she would not join them yet.
She had two generals to kill.
“I’ll clear a path,” Ennlin offered, and the ground rumbled, the hard-packed earth of the square rising into a scoop-like wave that caught the pooling acid and swept it across the square toward General Rosslyn. The general turned at the rising sound of splashing, her eyes widening as the greenish wave erupted up toward her with a final surge of earth.
Rosslyn had good reflexes. The waters of her tower erupted up into a screening wall that caught the acid and deflected it away, throwing it into the nearby river. That was fine. Student Eighteen didn’t want to fight with acid. She wanted to kill Rosslyn in honest battle.
General Rosslyn spread water across the square, dampening Ennlin’s ability to access earth, and stalked toward them, her tower lowering her to the ground. She looked livid, and snarled, “You will pay for the lives you took today.”
“Don’t pretend to any moral high ground here, General,” Student Eighteen retorted. “You planned to kill every one of us without mercy. I get that you’re annoyed we proved more dangerous than you expected, but that’s war.”
She walked toward Rosslyn across the water-filled square, her steps graceful from Isabell’s obsidian, her muscles strengthened from Tresta’s granite, while Nuzha and Hemma melded their wills with soapstone in preparation for a fight against the much more powerful Spitter. Dedenia and Ennlin prepared to meld their elements into the mix to give them advantage, and Aifric whispered that she was ready to tap pumice, if necessary.
Student Eighteen tapped chert and easily sensed General Rosslyn’s anger and resolve to win. She could respect that, and realized that Rosslyn actually believed herself a patriot for serving her queen. The poor, deluded fool. Patriotism to her country was good, but following a despot was simply misguided. So she used chert to push a sense of worry that Aonghus must be disabled or dead, the army critically fractured, the queen gone. Maybe it would be better to surrender.
She applied the feelings with a gentle touch, but Rosslyn scowled and shouted, “Stay out of my head! I deal with too much of that already.” The general threw out a hand, and waters of the square erupted toward Student Eighteen.
“Here we go,” she whispered as she rushed her enemy, trusting to her sisters to protect her. Waters all around smashed in upon them, but parted at the last second, allowing her to slip through. Tendrils of earth shot up from below to mix with the water, forming mud that her sisters could manipulate better, while spears of earth exploded up from beneath Rosslyn.
She sensed them coming and sheared them off, dancing aside with obsidian grace, redoubling her attacks with water. Her expression was confident, focused, and unafraid.
“She’s got a sculpted stone too,” Dedenia noted.
“Cheater,” Tresta growled.
“Just get me close, and I’ll take care of her,” Student Eighteen said, her entire focus on the fight. Water swept around her in sheets and spray and grasping tendrils and shards of stabbing ice. The entire sisterhood united in battle, each woman focusing on her area of expertise. They had two Spitters to Rosslyn’s one, but she was far stronger and was cheating with a sculpted stone. So they added air and earth, mixing elements into a shield dome around themselves to help push away the enemy attacks. It helped, but alone was not enough.
So they applied blind coal and pumice as needed, tapping and releasing each with well-honed precision. And while her sisters fought the elemental battle, Student Eighteen pressed closer to her enemy, one difficult step after another. All the while she maintained a subtle chert barrage of her own, playing upon Rosslyn’s doubts and fears, whispering that she would fail and that she was sacrificing her life for a madwoman.
She drew within a dozen steps, and could see that her inexorable advance and emotional battle was rattling her opponent. After she deflected an onslaught of icy crystals, she met Rosslyn’s gaze, and was surprised to see the general’s expression turn anguished.
“I know she’s mad! I know things could be better, but revolution won’t solve our problems. No one can defeat her!” Rosslyn shouted.
“Oh, she’s so tormented,” Aifric said, her soft, caring heart moved by the outburst.
“Weak,” Tresta retorted. “Choosing to serve evil rather than stand against it is just an excuse.”
Student Eighteen blocked out the argument as several of her sisters weighed in with opinions. She could not allow herself weakness. As much as she respected Rosslyn, she still had to defeat her.
She took another step, preparing to close the final yards in a rush and drive her long-knife into her enemy’s heart.
“We’ve got movement in the river!” Nuzha shouted just as a tidal wave of water exploded up the bank, sweeping toward them.
“This is going to hurt!” Hemma cried, and Student Eighteen sensed her sudden fear.
“Tapping blind coal,” Eleven reported, her voice calm as ever.
The wave abruptly stopped advancing, but spread around the square, surrounding them with a wall of water thirty feet high. Rosslyn rose up the wall and stood on the top, glaring down at them. “If I thought you could win, I would reconsider, but you can’t. So good-bye.”
Not good. Student Eighteen glanced around at the unbroken wall. Rosslyn was ascended, and she was proving it.
“I can’t push back,” Nuzha reported, her voice cracking with rising fear. “She must be tapping deep.”
“We can’t stop it,” Hemma said, sounding disgusted.
Rosslyn raised her hands, and waters all around crashed in like an avalanche. Both Nuzha and Hemma groaned with the effort, but couldn’t stop it. Water aval
anched down around them, but they stood unharmed in the center, protected by blind coal.
“Status?” Student Eighteen asked, trying to figure out how they were going to get up to Rosslyn and kill her.
“We are completely overwhelmed,” Nuzha shouted. “Not even Connor usually blocks us out so completely.”
“She’s really motivated,” Hemma confirmed. “I doubt she can maintain the pressure for long.”
“Longer than I can protect us,” Eleven reported. “We were already low on blind coal, and this is my last piece.”
“I estimate it will expire within seven seconds,” Eystri reported nervously.
“We’ve still got pumice,” Aifric reminded them. That was true, and pumice would protect them from direct assault by Rosslyn’s power, but no doubt the general understood that. All she had to do was maintain connection with the outer layer of the water and use that as a container to hold in the rest of the flood swirling around them, and pumice would not protect them from that. They would drown.
She hated to admit it, but they needed to retreat before they could re-engage. In a flash, she communicated that with her sisters, and they all agreed.
“I hate retreating,” Tresta stated.
“We all do, but we have no choice,” Aifric said in a soothing tone.
“All right, how do we get out of this?” Student Eighteen asked. The waters were not subsiding, but had formed a column forty feet thick and thirty feet high all around them. The outer edges flowed and bucked, moving the waters of the interior in powerful currents that would be difficult to swim through.
“Hemma and I can try pushing through them, but she’ll sense that and counter,” Nuzha said.
“How about mixing earth with it?” Isabell asked.
“That will help some,” Ennlin confirmed. “Or I can open a hole beneath us and try dropping us into the cavern where the acid used to be. We should be able to seal ourselves down there and escape.”
“As long as we get out before Aonghus returns,” Eystri said timidly. “I calculate he will not remainings out of the fightings for much longer.”
“Then we don’t have time to wait. Do it.” Student Eighteen ordered. They hadn’t been so stymied by elemental powers in a long time. Rosslyn must be burning through that sculpted stone fast. Hopefully it would expire soon. That would give them a huge advantage when they faced her again.
“Blind coal just ran out!” Eleven reported.
The currents suddenly seized them, spinning them wildly about and lifting them toward the middle of the column. Student Eighteen could sense Rosslyn’s growing sense of victory through chert. She thought she had them, no doubt planned to keep them pinned in the center of her water death trap until they drowned.
It was a good plan, but Ennlin, Nuzha, and Hemma mixed water and earth, forming a conduit just big enough for their body, extending that mixed conduit up from below to wrap them in its protective layer. As soon as they entered it, they began to slide fast down toward the ground. Spears of water stabbed toward them, but within that mixed-element cocoon, they held a tiny advantage.
“Maybe we should throw ourselves up to the top and finish her off,” Cacilia wondered.
“Tempting, but she holds the advantage up there,” Student Eighteen decided. “Get us into the ground.”
They slid lower, the ride rough as waters bucked and tore at their protective cocoon. Their lungs began to burn from lack of air, but they could hold their breath for at least two more minutes before the situation turned desperate.
“General Aonghus is back!” Ennlin reported, suddenly sounding panicked. “He’s sealing the earth beneath us.
With a sense of cold dread, Student Eighteen realized the situation had just turned desperate.
48
Dealing with a Really Bad Man
Nicklaus stood on the deck of his underwater secret mission boat, so eager to burst out of hiding his hands were quivering in his gloves. Using the ideas from Connor and Uncle Kilian about their Underwater Slide, and with some whispered instructions from Water, Nicklaus had made an even better boat.
He’d show them all that he could help. They’d left him behind in Merkland, and no one had believed him when he promised he could help. If only he’d been able to tell them about the amazing new mechanicals he was building with Water and Earth’s help. That would have convinced them, but the nice elementals were mad at Connor. He should know better than to make them angry. Grown-up always wanted to feel like they knew better, but the elementals were really old, so they thought they were grown-ups to the grown-ups. Connor must have forgotten to make sure he made them feel like they were smarter.
The secret mission boat was small, just big enough for Nicklaus to stand on deck in a bubble of air as it slid downriver, protected by layers of subtle shielding. Connor could sense other Petralists in the water, but Nicklaus couldn’t until Water showed him a neat trick. She helped him develop the mechanical he used for the shielding so whenever they touched a Petralist’s will in the river, that part of the shield where they touched turned orange.
The shields had sparkled with so much orange in the last half mile that fifty Petralists must be drawing from the river. They were real distracted, though. None of them had explored his shields more, which would have turned the color red, and he’d slipped through unnoticed.
Now it was time to show everyone how smart he was and how much he could help. Nicklaus stopped the secret mission boat near the docks of Lossit and glanced at the dozen viewscreens projected onto the air bubble around him. They showed angles of the battlefield using the same sightstone views as Lady Jean in the Battalion.
Air was really nice, and she loved to sing. Her voice was like the whisper of breezes among autumn leaves, except for times when it rose like the rumbling of distant thunder. Nicklaus didn’t think even Connor knew how much Air liked to sing. She told Nicklaus secrets and promised she hadn’t told any other living soul. He liked her a lot and really wanted to help her out.
She had taught him a secret of the speakstones and sightstones that not even Verena knew. Nicklaus giggled at that. She would be so happy to learn everything he knew. Verena was the best, and he bet she’d help him get his own big workshop after he stopped the fighting. Then he could help her and Hamish make new mechanicals and fly and eat cookies and stay up late any time he wanted to.
With Air’s help, he had tuned a special piece of quartzite for his viewscreens. Everyone thought speakstones had to be paired together to communicate, and that sightstones had to be paired with their viewing stone, but Air had taught Nicklaus that those pairings were like vibration frequencies between the stones, each pair slightly different. She then taught him how to tune one piece of quartzite to vibrate at varying frequencies that allowed it to join lots of other pairings. So he could see any of the viewscreens and listen to any of the speakstone conversations.
He giggled again. He bet Verena wished she had one of his stones. They made everything so much easier, although they consumed the quartzite a lot faster.
The views were not happy, and his good humor faded as he scanned the views of the raging battle. Everywhere he looked, people were fighting and getting hurt, or even dying. It made him sad. He liked shooting soldiers with missiles and speedslings, but he always made sure they had protective devices and that Healers helped if they got hurt. No one was remembering that. They were just fighting and hurting. He was glad he came to help.
One view caught his attention and he grinned at the sight of Lady Shona soaring over the battlefield. She had ridden one of those Althing trebuchets. What a good idea! He couldn’t wait to try it, although he had a battle suit so it wouldn’t be fair. She smashed down into the middle of a big group of angry soldiers along with a big barrel that exploded into a cloud of purple gas that made the soldiers start coughing. Lady Shona started punching people in the head, knocking them down while they coughed. That didn’t seem fair, but she was a high lady, and Nicklaus’ mother always said t
hat nobility had to do difficult things sometimes in order to help their people.
Another view drew his gaze, and he marveled at the sight of water churning in the big town square. The outer edges of the big column glittered like a thousand crystals in the light. He also spotted earthen spears stabbing up into the water from underground. That didn’t make sense. It looked like fun, but why would they play in the middle of a battle.
Then he spotted a figure tumbling in the water, and he recognized her.
“Aifric?” he breathed, suddenly feeling very scared. Bad Petralists were trying to hurt her, but she was the nicest person he knew, as nice as Lady Jean, except for times when she seemed different. Christin thought maybe she acted different when she was hungry. Some ladies were like that.
Right now she was getting hurt by bad people, and that made Nicklaus angry. He spotted one lady in an Obrioner officer’s uniform standing on top of the water, hands raised, looking really happy about being mean. She was probably friends with the bad men who had kidnapped Nicklaus the year before. His father had taught him that bad people sometimes would not stop until you fought them.
Or showed them you were stronger.
Nicklaus changed the complex commands he’d worked into the secret mission boat control soapstone, and the boat rose to the surface. As soon as he reached open air, Nicklaus activated thrusters and shot into the sky. He couldn’t help laughing with joy to fly.
Hamish wouldn’t mind that he’d borrowed pieces from one of his backup suits to make one for himself. Water had told him to do it, and she was so smart and so nice, and she promised that she could help him make mechanicals so strong he could stop the fighting and save a lot of lives. That’s what Hamish would do.
As he rose into the air, he banked toward the angry lady hurting Aifric in the water. The mean lady didn’t realize he was coming until he flew right into her back at full speed.
Right before impact, Nicklaus activated quartzite shielding. He hit so hard that he almost crashed right through his shielding, and he banged his face against his helmet faceplate. That hurt a lot, but the bad lady got hurt worse. She screamed as she tumbled away, but water rose up to catch her and turn her around. She looked angry.
