Firewyrm

by Erik Schubach

  The med-tech said as he looked at the preliminary scans he was taking, “Lady Aurora, we need to get her to the surgical ward. Her femoral artery was torn... we don't know why she hasn't bled out yet, it looks as if something stemmed the flow. We'll need to replace a section of it with a trilon mesh, and...”

  Rory huffed in frustration with her guards looming over her shoulder. “Children, you're all children. Set her there. Now.” She pointed at a trauma room, the man started to argue but her eyes flared, frost seemed to cover the corridors instantly. He swallowed and motioned to the trauma room.

  The orderlies complied, their eyes on Rory like they were looking at their goddess. I realized they likely thought they were since if I remembered my Naiad folklore correctly, they worshiped Acionna, the Celtic water goddess, and Queen Mab who could shape water and mold it to her will to form impossible creations in winter's ice.

  The med-tech called out as I was transferred to an exam table, “We'll need a molecular de-bonder for the armor fused with her skin, a compression unit so we can remove the impaling object and...”

  Aurora said, “Move back.” She made a parting motion with her hands and everyone slid back like the space between them and I had just simply grown and nobody had really moved. Aurora hesitated a moment as she passed Myra, and stopped to look her in the eye before she stepped up to me and made a growing motion with her hands, pulling them apart like she held an invisible inflating ball between them.

  I gasped in pain as my armor just tore away from me, hovered in the air and dropped to the ground. I squeaked out at her, “Ow!”

  She paused a moment, an unrepentant look on her face as she said, “That hurt? Good. It's what you get for insisting on tilting at windmills like this. One of these times it will actually be a dragon and that will be the end of it.”

  Then she leaned in and whispered, “Just because you heal fast doesn't make you indestructible. I don't know why you are in such a hurry to die, and just when you learn you have the capacity to live forever.”

  I shrugged and said in a normal tone, “I'm sorry, but this is who I was long before we met. I can't change who I am.”

  She sighed and smiled, nodded, and said, “I know. And that is one of the things that has me drawn to you, Knith Shade, Enforcer of the Brigade. You've more courage than sense.”

  Then she leaned down and her lips brushed mine and I was in one of the heavens, forgetting about all the incessant pain and aches of my body until I was seeing stars and shouting, “Mother fairy humper!”

  I had to fight to prevent the new pain in my leg from overwhelming me and to stay conscious as I looked to her hand which had the remains of the pole crushed between her sculpted ice fingernails. That reminded me again, just how insanely strong the Greater Fae were, and it terrified me for the most part, but my pain addled brain thought it was sexy as hells on Rory.

  My voice rasped with the pain, “You distracted me.”

  The med-tech was blurting out, “What are you doing? The trauma to the tissues and... she'll bleed out in...”

  She hissed at him, “Enough!” Then she looked at me, lying naked in front of her, a mass of bruises and cuts, and burns, where the nano-panels had either ice burned into my flesh from the cold of space or burned into it from the overheated and shorting power supplies. My legs fractured, and one mangled, a pool of blood starting to soak the padded table beneath me. I felt so very small.

  She started chanting in a language forgotten long before man ever walked old Earth, it built upon itself as frost swirled in the room, the temperature dropping as everything iced over, including my skin, but I didn't feel cold. Ever since Mab marked me, their icy magic didn't seem to bother me much anymore.

  Her voice filled the universe, a haunting echo of a memory being pulled from all points in time, reminding me that she was her mother's daughter and almost rivaled her in power. The room was shaking as she pulled more power to her, shaping it to her will, and it gladly bowed before her.

  Then she passed her hands over me, leaving me in a cocoon of translucent ice that glowed an eerie blue. Now... I was freezing. This ice was pure magic, so dense that it was sucking the heat out of the world. I would have screamed in pain as it seemed to collapse in on itself, into me, suffusing every cell in my body, burning me with its icy tendrils... but nothing came from my mouth.

  Rory stopped as the pain and power seemed to just melt away. She swayed and stumbled, but Myra caught her with a hand and her tail, steadying her. I felt... well I felt wiped out, but most of the pain was gone.

  I looked down to see my leg was healed, just a nasty puckering scar remained and red patches where the burns had been all over me, but I knew it would all be gone in a few days as my natural healing ability repaired me, and the bruising all over my body would fade quickly too.

  Rory had helped me before, but nothing this extensive. And it tired her out because my body rejects magic so she had to pour many times more into it than she normally would. And the amount of magic she poured into this almost rivaled the power of the wards the Queens had put around their palaces.

  I sat up and reached out a hand to steady her as the med-techs swarmed me, taking readings as they looked between me and her in incredulity. This was the difference between the power of a Winter Maiden and the lesser Fae Lords and Ladies who did minor healing spells for Med-Tech. “You ok, Rory? You didn't need to exhaust yourself like that, Med-Tech is good. They could have taken care of me.”

  She nodded, caught her breath then said, “With their archaic methods? Cutting into you, replacing parts?” Rory then offered sweetly to the medical personnel around us, “Offense not intended, I'm sure you are a credit to your profession.”

  Ok, I snorted at her backhanded compliment to them. But they didn't seem to even notice as they were excitedly chattering between themselves, all taking scans of me and comparing their pads. I cleared my throat. “Umm... I'm a little naked here, can I cover up?”

  Graz buzzed up to me and said, “You can't be a little naked, Knith. You're full on showing your goodies. Is your brain damaged? Did she not heal that? I mean I know you bigs don't have much going on upstairs, to begin with, but...” I made a zipping motion over her lips and she shut her little yap and gave me a dirty look then turned to everyone. “Yup, she's ok.”

  I glared at Myra who was just grinning as she looked at me from head to toe. She held her hands up in surrender then turned to leave the room. Graz zipped up to land on her shoulder, she was babbling to her as they headed down the hall, “You're a badass coming in guns blazing. You saved our asses when you...”

  Snickering I smirked. Good, Graz could annoy Myra now. I turned back to see Rory glaring at me. Gulp. “Commander Udriel? Really? What happened out there? I got the call from Mother, telling me you were out on the skin, facing down a couple of suspects in maintenance rigs.” Then she paused and looked around. “My girl asked for some clothes, why are you all just standing around?” Everyone looked at her, her hair was rippling out behind her, her icy glare was literally causing ice to form on their clothes. They scurried off like rats.

  Then she looked at me for answers and I just grinned sheepishly. “Mother was making a big deal about nothing. It wasn't all that bad...”

  The persnickety AI took umbrage at that and the binary jerk turned on the info screen on the wall, and a news wave special report started playing. Eileen Brightleaf was outside the Alpha-Stack's External Maintenance Crew Office, an inset video was playing beside her as she was in the middle of saying, “... obtained exclusive footage of Lieutenant Knith Shade of the FABLE office of the Enforcers Brigade, engaging arson suspects connected with the inferno on Alpha-B.”

  The inset video expanded to take up the whole wave, and I watched from what was identified as external maintenance observation camera alpha seven ninety-three. I groaned and squinted an eye in mock pain, wishing Rory wasn't seeing this as I saw myself with the antenna in my hand, charging at the two
mech-suited skin jockeys.

  Maybe I WAS nuts.

  She glared between the screen and me, then covered her mouth as I clashed with the huge mechanical rigs. I had to grin a little because at the time I had felt like I was moving around in a slow and clunky manner, not to mention I was scared to hells and desperate, but from a neutral observer point of view, it looked like all my luck and improvisation played out like a choreographed battle.

  I winced when the hooked pole was thrust through my leg in memory of the white-hot pain of it. Then when it was over, the tug came into view as it sped toward me, just to be engulfed in a flaming explosion and power discharge, a piece of debris taking out the camera.

  With a squinted eye I said, “See? Not that bad...”

  While Eileen Brightleaf was talking about my injuries and how I was being rushed to medical, Rory just stared at me like I had just grown a second head.

  An intern saved me by coming in with a medical smock. Rory stepped back while I donned it, cataloging the aches and pains of my healing bruises. I thanked the intern then I stood, looked around until I spotted my new armor, in a melted, twisted mess on the floor, my helmet was nowhere to be seen. Zak was going to slap me with all four arms then assign me the crappiest third-hand armor at supply for destroying the experimental next-gen armor.

  I looked down at myself and sighed and said, “I guess I better get to Battalion Supply and get into proper gear before I question Max and debrief. The commander is probably suffering apoplexy since us enforcers are supposed to stay out of the spotlight, not be plastered all over the news like Daniel and I have been the past twenty-four hours. I'm sure I'll have sewage duty... or mine security again.”

  The med-techs were blurting out, “You can't go anywhere until you are cleared by us to return to...”

  Rory held up a halting hand. “I'm still on the rosters as a level seven med-tech, and she's under my care.”

  A male orderly started to say, “There's no level seven, Doctor Zamir runs the department and they are level five...”

  The look the lead tech was giving him had him trailing off. Did my girl's magic put her that far ahead of the department head? Then I realized it wasn't just her magic. I fell for her intelligence as much as for how she called me on my bullshit.

  She had come closer than anyone to be able to engineer a method for which the Fae could procreate this far from Earth to bring their numbers back to Equilibrium. So her raw knowledge in the medical field coupled with her healing magic earned her a rating so high.

  I shuddered in realization that her half brother, Sindri, likely approached her level of competence in the field, he just lacked the one thing Aurora had... a moral core. He didn't care who he hurt... who suffered, since they were insignificant to him, just a means to an end.

  Her icy glare got the dissenters in the room to back down. Then she said to me, “Are you good to move?” I nodded and she said expectantly, “Transfer her care to me.”

  The doc exhaled then sighed and tapped something on their pad and handed it to Rory, who pressed her thumb on it. “There, now let's get you home...”

  I shook my head, knowing there was going to be an argument, and looked around to the people present. She looked around then waved a hand absently and a bubble of raw magic that looked to be a thin bubble of crystal clear ice formed around us. “They cannot hear us now.”

  With an apologetic look, I told her in a low tone as we watched Graz buzz around on the outside of the ice globe, looking for a way in. “We're investigating it as a simple arson as far as the rest of the people on the world are concerned since the knowledge that there are Firewyrms on board could cause panic. I need to end this now before your mother or the Summer Lady finds out Commander Hardy has been bound by law. I know why he did what he did.”

  She opened her mouth and I shook my head. “I don't condone it one bit. Poor Ember was terrified, but it could have been worse if she hadn't found a way back into the world, she could have been lost forever. But I'm afraid of what the Queens might do to the man.”

  She glared at the wall, her eyes crackling with icy fire and she calmed herself. “I feel the same, the poor girl is just a baby... but I understand that the Fae cannot just run roughshod over the law as they did in a bygone era. We are part of this world and we need to abide by the laws of the land.”

  I nodded and said, “I promise... I'll head right home to bed after I get debriefed and I speak with the Queens in Flame's pen.”

  She froze and blinked at me. I smirked and pointed out, “There are only so many places you can hide Mab from Mother's eyes and sensors. And I know she wouldn't be foolish enough to return to Ha'real.”

  The woman smiled slowly and shook her head as she said, “If I weren't so mad at you right now, I'd find the way your mind works very sexy right now.”

  I grinned and then looked down at the smock I was wearing. “Or my impeccable style?”

  She smiled and fought off a chuckle. Good, I wasn't up shit creek as far as I thought if I could get a smile out of her. I chanced it and leaned in as she lowered the ice barrier, and she started to move in too then her eyes locked on something behind me and she held a hand up between our lips.

  Whaaaa? I glanced back to see Myra watching us, a crooked smirk on her lips. I sighed heavily as Rory stepped past me, knocking my shoulder as she hissed at me, “Commander Udriel?” And she was gone in a huff.

  Graz zipped to my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “You're in it hip deep now Shade. Greater Fae are majorly territorial, and you had just come to an understanding that the two of you were courting. You shouldn't be hanging out with other potential mates, don't you know anything?”

  I sputtered to her and to the Winter Maiden, “I didn't call her, Mother keeps doing it!”

  She stopped next to Myra, who dipped gracefully into a respectful mini curtsy. “Majesty.”

  Aurora looked her up and down again then just nodded to herself once before saying, “I guess I owe you a debt of gratitude for watching my girl's back for me.”

  Myra just waved it off, tail twitching. “It's made things interesting for the last twenty-four hours. More entertaining than staring off into the dark waiting for sensor contact of things in the world's path.”

  Then she asked as I reached them and tried to drag Rory away physically, “So does she still do that thing when she kisses... with her toes?”

  Aurora nodded as her glare turned into a smirk. “She scrunches them. Did she ever...”

  I blurted, “Ok, that's enough of that, no time to compare notes. I've got to get some new gear and get this case closed. Come along your princess-ness.” I marched right out, Graz opting to sit on Rory's pointed ear to listen to the two gossips until my girl felt I had suffered enough and followed after me.

  I grumped, “I didn't call her!”

  “So you keep on saying.”

  Before I knew it, we were in her personal white sports skiff with her guards driving. I let her know as much as I could about an open case, and kept insisting I needed to finish it. She relented to my insistence and that's how I found myself at the Beta-C Battalion headquarters in Irontown a few minutes later, with Zak just blinking at the torn-up mess that used to be the most advanced magi-tech scatter armor the Batallion had.

  He muttered as he sifted through the mess with his two ancillary cybernetic arms while he crossed his other arms across his chest. “Damn it, Shade! This was R&D's experimental shit, it hadn't been permanently assigned to us yet.” He looked over the helmet we found in the Ready Squadron landing bay on our way out of it. “At least this is still salvageable.”

  I squinted an eye in apology. “I have to go get my ass reamed by the brass, Zak, is there any way you could front me another set of SAs until I can requisition some?”

  He huffed as the racks that held the Scatter Armor and other equipment started rotating past him. “Just one of the gauntlets with those nano-panels cost more than our comb
ined yearly incomes, times two! Do you want to know what an entire gear-out cost?”

  I winced, not wanting an answer to his hopefully rhetorical question. “A lot?”

  “A shit ton of a lots!” He slowed at some armor that looked to be stained in greens and browns and smirked. “I oughta stick you with Freel's old SAs, but he's twice your size.”

  Eww... not that I have anything against water goblins, but they secrete a greenish-yellow puss from their pores that allows them to swim through the water much faster. But it smells like rotted algae and it stains everything and is almost impossible to wash out.

  “Oh come on, Zak, you know you're my guy. I love you, man.”

  He sighed then smirked and then reached under his counter. “You're just damn lucky the geeks up in Research and Development find your feedback on that experimental armor invaluable and fascinating. Especially how you can over-stress it and even use it for things they hadn't even thought it could.”

  He placed a wire basket in front of me. “I was about to ship this up-ring to you before the fire. They have the next iteration of the armor with the tweaks you recommended as well as some additional enhancements they want you to evaluate for them.”

  I told him. “One thing you could pass along before my weekly armor evaluation report is that when the armor reconfigures into emergency EVA mode, it cuts off access to my gear. It almost cost me my life today.”

  He looked me up and down, taking in the medical smock and nodded. “I saw the reports. Damn Shade, you got a death wish or something? At this rate, you'll never make it to retirement.”

  “Well, I didn't start out the day thinking about how much fun it would be to get my ass kicked up on top of the world.”

  Zak shook his head as I slipped into the fresh set of sensor contact garments from the gear. “Didn't look like they kicked your ass from what I saw.”

  As I flexed in the skinsuit before donning the new armor I pointed to where Rory was pacing by the elevators. “Took all the king's horses, all the king's men, and a princess from the Unseelie Court to put me back together again.”