Plus Ultimate

by Simon Archer

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that my companions had taken my lead. The kingdom elves had all drawn their own mage’s circles in the dirt along the beaten path in a line alongside mine, while Freyja and Ishida stood off to the side by the tree to watch, just in case something came along to disrupt our spell. The kingdom elves all watched me intently, waiting for me to signal it was time to begin my song. This would be my first attempt at doing a spell in tandem, but I figured it couldn’t be all that different from playing in an orchestra. I breathed in deeply and nodded my head in the customary orchestral signal that it was time to begin.

  The kingdom elves took the hint and began to hum the moment that I began to play myself. This spell was a complex variation on an E flat minor scale, hence why my companions had had to spend so long reviewing it. Since we were playing together this time, I kept my eyes open to keep tabs on everyone and make sure things were going smoothly. Bernsten looked like he was going to stumble and forget the spell’s musical pattern at first, but he recovered and got back on track, and the group as a whole didn’t suffer.

  A few bars into the scale, small, thin, twirling streams of golden light appeared in the air before us, trailing up together towards the sky. As they ascended, the blinding effects of our enemy’s spell seemed to redouble, an exploding flash of blinding light that seemed to fill every bit of the air around us, and we all winced but managed to continue with our spell.

  The kingdom elves’ voices all blended together nicely. Bernsten’s low, booming voice, in particular, sounded nice. In contrast, Godfried’s voice, while equally pleasant, was a high tenor, adding another dimension to the music. Their voices combined with Marinka’s high soprano and Nadeine’s low alto meant that together they covered the whole spectrum of vocal music. In addition, they all sang in tune, which only highlighted the kingdom elves’ natural talent for music. Paired with the low, rich tones of my cello, it sounded like some kind of otherworldly, ethereal recording I would have found of a renaissance Earth composition.

  At the appearance of the blinding light from our enemy’s spell, the thin streams of golden light from our woven spellsong tilted a bit and began to travel in the direction of the mountains, winding through the sky like winding ribbons. As they grew closer to the nearest mountain, the blinding light grew dimmer and dimmer until, in the last few bars of our spell, it barely registered at all.

  When our spell finished, I kept my bow hanging in the air right above my strings for a moment, letting the sound of the final bar ring out in the surrounding forest. I smiled and looked around at my companions after the ringing finally ceased, and they were all grinning ear to ear, and not just from their relief from the blinding light.

  “That was… such a wonderful experience,” Marinka said finally, and I was surprised to find that a single tear was running down the side of her face. She wiped it away and stammered out an explanation. “It is just… so wonderful to see what my people are capable of after all this time.”

  Bernsten nodded in an uncharacteristically serious manner. “Indeed, it is. Thank you once again, Leo Hayden, for all you have done for our people even in this short time.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” I said with a smile as I stood. My golden cello flew off into the distance, leaving behind a trail of stardust in the same direction as the thin tendrils of light went when they snuffed out the light from our enemy’s spell. “And thank you, guys. That was awesome. I felt like I was finally playing in an orchestra or a small chamber group again. It was great.”

  “Oh yes, that was amazing,” Ishida cheered as she and Freyja walked over to rejoin the group. “It’s always so much fun to see you guys in action, but this was the best yet.”

  “By far, it sounded the best,” Freyja agreed. “But I do like those giant weapons. You should try those out together sometime.” She flashed us a lopsided grin.

  Godfried nodded and puffed out his chest a bit in a sign of pride. “Indeed, our combined power is something to behold. We should do this more often.”

  “I feel we’re about to have ample opportunities for that,” I told him, and his smile waned a bit as he remembered what we were about to do and where we were about to go. “Speaking of which, is everyone ready?”

  “As we’ll ever be, I suppose.” Freyja shrugged.

  “That is the spirit, my friends!” Bernsten boomed, clapping the fox-elf between the shoulder blades in his customary gesture of friendship. She jumped out the way in alarm, but Bernsten appeared unphased. “Let us embark on the final leg of our great journey.”

  “I only hope it is not the final leg of all of our journeys,” Godfried muttered and shook his head slightly. “But then again, to die in battle is to die in glory. Let us continue.”

  “That’s a fun thought,” I said, arching an eyebrow at him.

  “Indeed, I thought of it many times throughout my childhood,” the kid said as we walked over to mount our horses, not seeming to have picked up on my sarcasm. “But I doubt the truth of it now that it is potentially staring me in the face. When once I would have perhaps preferred and even dreamed of dying in such a manner, now I would prefer to be both victorious in battle and in life. Even so, the possibility of death remains, though I will do what I can to prevent it. If it means the success of our quest, I prefer to think I will accept my untimely death with open arms.”

  “Well, let’s just focus on the victory part before thinking any more about the death part.” I clapped his shoulder and tried not to display my alarm at the kid’s grim monologue.

  “This sounds like an excellent plan,” Bernsten agreed, eyeing Godfried with skepticism. “Let us go then.”

  We mounted our horses, ushered them down the remaining few feet of the beaten path, then off into the underbrush behind the fortress. I looked behind me as we left the refurbished fortress, watching the building disappear behind us along with any remnant of forest elf civilization along with it.

  There was only a little bit of forest between the fortress and the mountain, maybe a mile at most. We reached the edge of the underbrush in short order and led our horses out to the other side. He and the other horses picked up speed when they saw the gap in the trees that led to the mountain and rushed to get out as quickly as they could. Bill visibly relaxed when we left the forest, his shoulders slumping, and I felt all of the tension he had been carrying in his body since we entered the forest fall away.

  A rolling plain of grass between the forest and the mountains as the land gradually rose, but it was also short, maybe a half-mile at most. The air was fresh again, and I breathed in deeply, enjoying being in a beautiful place once more. The first mountain of the range loomed above us, tall and gray, but not dreary or lifeless. When I squinted and looked carefully at the mountain, swaths of green grass and trees caught my eye, though not as dense as the forest, of course. I also saw some light blue that indicated the presence of lakes and springs.

  Just seeing all that made me feel a bit better about traveling into the mountains after seeing these things. For some reason, probably the kingdom elves’ descriptions of the mountain elves themselves, I had pictured the mountains as a horrible, prison-like place, desolate of life, but clearly, that wasn’t the case. When I thought back on it, I should have realized that it may not have been the whole truth after the stories the kingdom elves had first told me of the forest elves and how they lived. I smiled thoughtfully. Even if we did find danger there, at least it would be pleasant to look at and travel through.

  Some of my companions didn’t seem quite as interested in the mountain as I was. Godfried and Bernsten both looked a bit queasy, while Nadeine studied the mountain as carefully as I did. Her reaction was grimmer than mine, though, her eyes darting around the mountain as if she was expecting our enemy to come crashing down on us at any moment. Ishida gulped several times, finally closing her eyes and breathing in deeply in what I assumed was an attempt to prepare herself for the journey ahead. Freyja looked interested in what she saw, but tense a
nd on alert like Nadeine.

  Marinka, however, reacted more like me. “It is beautiful,” she gasped as she stared up at the mountain in wonder.

  “It really is,” I said, excited that someone else thought the same way. “Look at all those trees and lakes. It actually looks pretty nice, not at all like I imagined it.”

  In fact, the mountain looked even more beautiful than the Rocky Mountains in Colorado had that one time I had gone there to visit my mom’s cousin as a kid. We’d never gone back, but I’d always remembered those flowing streams and hiking trails surrounded by green trees and foliage. Somehow, these mountains had an even more wondrous quality to them, almost magical. I chuckled a bit under my breath at that thought, realizing that it was probably pretty accurate.

  “Indeed,” Marinka agreed. “I do not know what I had expected, but it was nothing like this. Perhaps I expected something more militaristic, like the mountain elves themselves.”

  Bernsten shook his head. “I do not know. It may appear inviting, but I do not anticipate that it will actually be so when we journey through it.”

  “Of course, I do not expect this journey to be easy,” Marinka mused, “but it is beautiful.” She stared up at the mountain again in wonder.

  “I mean, it can’t be that bad,” I reasoned. “I don’t expect whoever we’re looking for knows exactly where we are or what we’re doing, any more than he did in the forest.”

  “I do not know…” Nadeine’s voice trailed off as she continued her intense visual scan of the mountain. “We are headed straight into our enemy’s territory.”

  “Well, yeah, but there are a lot of mountains, right?” I gestured across the range that stretched before us. “He could be anywhere.”

  “The light from the forest seemed to burst forth straight for this particular mountain,” Nadeine reminded me.

  “That’s true,” I admitted, but I was quick to add, “But I don’t see it headed that direction anymore.”

  It was true. Though our spell was keeping it at bay and preventing it from blinding us, the light from our enemy’s spell still flashed in and out of our field of vision, and the closer we grew to the mountain the more I could make out that it shot in a cylindrical stream, much like the one we had seen in the very center of the forest, over the mountain in front of us and deep into the others behind it.

  We pushed onward, and in a short time, we reached the foot of the mountain. I pulled on Bill’s reins, signaling that he should stop. As usual, my companions followed my lead.

  Marinka looked up at the continued stream of light from the mountain. “Perhaps our enemy is on the move.”

  “I think that’s a safe assumption,” I said as I ran my hands through Bill’s mane. He seemed excited about the prospect of heading up the mountain and was perturbed that I had stopped him. “It makes sense, right? He’s completed what he wanted to do with the forest, and now, he’s headed deeper into the mountains, and taking his spell with him. The mountain elves’ magic is tied to their orbs, right? So wouldn’t the spell travel with those orbs, the ones he used to cast the spell in the first place?”

  “Indeed,” Marinka said, and she was getting excited now, speaking more quickly. “This does make sense, Leo, and I believe it is an excellent theory. This means that we have a direct line of sight to our enemy’s location!”

  “If this is so, he is very far ahead of us,” Godfried observed, looking up at the cylindrical light himself now. He was right. I couldn’t even see which mountain the light led to it was so far back.

  “That’s true, but it’s more guidance than we had a few minutes ago. It’s not like we can’t get a general idea of where it’s going.” I pointed in an eastward direction. “See? It’s going that way. So if we follow it and head that direction, eventually, we’ll find him.”

  Marinka followed my hand and smiled. “You are correct, Leo. So long as we are traveling at a quicker pace than our enemy, we will be able to reach him.”

  “That is a big if,” Nadeine said as she arched a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Not really,” I said. “I mean, the mountains have to end at some point, right? And he has to be going somewhere, have some kind of destination. He’ll stop eventually if he hasn’t already. Even so, perhaps we’re faster than him anyway with our horses and how long each day we spend traveling, though I agree, we can’t be sure.”

  “That is true,” Nadeine said carefully. “He will have to stop, eventually. But my concern is, what if he is traveling because he knows we are coming? Then he will be ready for us when we do find him. We will be walking right into his trap.”

  Her words hung in the air for some time as we all let that possibility sink in. I had to admit, the thought had crossed my mind, but I hadn’t wanted to voice it. Even so, it was probably good that one of us had, and I wasn’t exactly surprised that it had been Nadeine.

  “That’s possible,” I said finally after a long period of painful silence in which I thought at least one of Godfried, Bernsten, or Ishida would throw up from the stress. “But I don’t know how productive it is to think like that. I mean, what would we do differently if you were right?”

  “Of course, you are correct, Leo.” Nadeine sighed. “Even if he knows we are coming, we must go. It is our quest. We must try to destroy him before he destroys us.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “Plus, while your theory is possible, is it really all that likely? I mean, we got all the way to Viktor’s bedroom last time without being caught. And then, we got all kinds of information out of him before he died, even though this mountain elf sent Viktor a message telling him he would kill him before he revealed anything. Doesn’t that mean that even though this guy had some means of monitoring Viktor, it wasn’t perfect? And, more importantly, that he doesn’t necessarily have the same means of monitoring us?”

  Nadeine looked a bit relieved by that. “Yes, you are probably right,” the lady knight admitted, though she was still on edge and watching the mountain in front of us intently. “We must operate under the assumption that we are going to be successful, and what you say is reasonable. To monitor us constantly over all of the lands in which we have traveled and will travel would be an incredibly powerful spell. Far more powerful perhaps even than the one he has already cast on the forest. It is unlikely that he has the power to perform both at once. Even if he did have the power, he likely would not have enough orbs.”

  The rest of my companions seemed to relax at our words of reason, and Godfried and Bernsten looked slightly less green.

  “This is all true,” Marinka agreed, “and nevertheless, we will not know the answers to these questions until we continue with our journey. So I propose that we should do so. As you both indicated, we have little time to lose.”

  She gestured in the direction of the mountain in front of us, and I studied the nearest portion of it closely for the first time, having been distracted by our conversation. There was what looked like a hiking path leading up the mountain off to our left, surrounded by the rocks and boulders that lent the mountain its gray color. The path was made of hard-packed dirt and seemed to wind up across the mountain, though I couldn’t see all the way up due to the mountain’s large size and the surrounding fog.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Let’s get going. Do we think the horses can make it up?” I stroked Bill’s mane again. He certainly seemed to want to try.

  Bernsten shrugged. “I do not see why not. It is a path like any other, though steeper in parts. The horses have not trained in such terrain, but they did not train in the forest either, and they have managed well, have they not?”

  “Agreed.” I looked down at Bill. “You’ll be fine, won’t you, boy?” He huffed in response and beat his hooves against the grassy ground, looking forward at the path. “Alright, he wants to go. Let’s go.”

  “Very well,” Marinka said, nodding solemnly and running her hands through her own horse’s mane. “What will come will come.”

  I pulled on Bill’s rein
s at her words, indicating that he should continue forward. He gladly obliged, climbing up on the mountain’s trail and trotting upwards. The other horses followed suit without much hesitancy. They, like us, were certainly glad to be out in the fresh air and away from the decay that was currently the forest.

  22

  We traveled on for the remainder of the day. We didn’t see any animals other than a bird here and there and a few fish in the streams we passed. Freyja and Ishida grabbed some of the fish using their animal-like skills and set them aside in a pack to prepare for eating later that evening when we found a place to rest.

  “It is good that we have found food,” Bernsten said after they had caught several fish. “I believe we have enough to last the journey, but we can never be prepared enough. I did not expect the mountains to be so bountiful in resources.”

  “Nor did I,” Marinka agreed, watching as our forest elf companions killed the fish and packed them up, “but it is a pleasant surprise, indeed.”

  “Yes,” Godfried said. “I must admit that I was concerned about entering enemy territory. But the mountains have proven unthreatening thus far.” True to his words, the kid looked more relaxed than he had been since we left the kingdom. Our whole group was in good spirits, in fact, relieved that we had yet to be attacked.

  “Indeed,” Nadeine said. “Though we ought to still keep our guard up given the situation.”

  “Of course,” Godfried said, bowing his head in deference to her authority. “As always.”

  “Do not contribute to the young man’s worry, sister,” Bernsten scolded her lightheartedly, leaning across her horse and throwing a lazy arm around her shoulders. “He has only now reentered good spirits, as have us all.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s going to let their guard down,” I laughed.