Transcendence and Rebellion

by Michael G. Manning

  Moira nodded. “Yeah. I’m thinking about taking a bath.”

  “I still don’t see why you didn’t let me have one of them,” said Myra. “Then you wouldn’t have to keep replenishing me.”

  “You’re too old,” said Moira. “It’s been so long since you were created that we really aren’t twins anymore.”

  Myra pursed her lips in annoyance. “I don’t think we’ve diverged that much. Are you starting to mistrust me?”

  “You know that’s not the case,” said Moira. Not that I really trust anyone completely anymore, least of all myself. “But you’ve become a true sister to me. What I’m sending those krytek to do is dangerous. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

  Myra rolled Humphrey onto his back and began to give him an intense belly rub. “Well, I suppose I should be glad to know that you want to protect me, but I’m bored!” She picked up Humphrey and held him in front of her with his paws in her hands. “Think about poor little Humphrey here. I’ve been petting him so much he’s going to go bald.” The dog promptly licked her face.

  Moira smiled. “I think he’s enjoyed all the attention. Besides, I’m stuck here too. It’s just as boring for me. I’m going to be lonely once you leave.”

  Myra perked up. “I’m leaving?”

  “Someone has to check on Matthew and Irene. Now that the guards are all firmly under my control, we need to find out what’s happened to them. You’re the logical choice to send. If I’m not here when Tyrion or the Queen come to check on me, they’ll know something is afoot,” explained Moira.

  Myra put Humphrey down and spun in a small circle, then stopped. “What if it takes too long? Even if you put everything you have in me, I’ll only last a week or so. You aren’t planning to use one of the human guards, are you?”

  Myra required not only aythar to survive, but more specifically, her creator’s aythar. The only way around that would be for her to take possession of a living aystrylin. That was what Moira’s recent spell-twins had done with the krytek. A normal human would work as well, although the aystrylin of a normal person would leave Myra with very little extra aythar to spend, aside from what she needed to stay alive.

  It was also murder. The body of the host lived, but the mind and soul were destroyed.

  Moira blanched. “No! I’m not that bad, yet.” She went to her wardrobe and pulled out a wooden jewelry box. Inside was a silver ring set with a large sapphire. Runes were engraved around the band, and the stone glowed with power to Myra’s magesight. “I’ve been saving aythar for a rainy day. You can take this with you.”

  “I can’t take that. Your mother gave you that ring,” protested Myra.

  “Our mother,” corrected Moira. “Take it. You may need it if anything delays your return. There’s enough aythar in it to keep you alive for at least an extra week or two. We don’t know if they’re checking the boundary or not, so it might be a while before anyone notices you.”

  Myra nodded, accepting the ring. “When do you want me to go?”

  “There’s no one watching us any longer, so now is fine. Don’t stay any longer than necessary, though. Return as soon as you talk to them. I need to know what they’re doing, and I’m sure they want to know what’s going on here,” said Moira.

  After a short goodbye, Myra left and Moira went to take her bath, but no amount of water and soap could make her feel clean after what she had done to her guards.

  ***

  Matthew Illeniel stared out from the battlements of Castle Lancaster. The field that stretched out before him was littered with wreckage. Over the past week, the attacks on the castle had increased in frequency and intensity, but it wasn’t ogres and spiders they worried about anymore. Those had vanished days ago, replaced by a more sinister foe.

  The machines had come.

  It had been small flyers in the beginning. Chad Grayson had shot the one that flew over the castle out of the air with an enchanted arrow, but soon after that they had become too numerous for their limited supply of such weapons. Karen, Elaine, Lynaralla, and Irene had taken over then, bringing the swarms of flying machines down with bursts of fire, lightning, and beams of channeled force.

  Unfortunately, Castle Lancaster didn’t have an enchanted shield the way that Castle Cameron did, so they had no defense that could give them a respite. The young wizards were forced to work in shifts to keep their attackers at bay.

  Cyhan, Gram, and Alyssa hadn’t had much to do. They had been forced to watch helplessly while the mages took care of the majority of the defense. Normal arrows were largely ineffective against the metal flyers. That had soon changed, though, when the crawlers had appeared.

  Crawlers, that had been the best name they could come up with for the six-legged machines that had come swarming across the field. They were the size of large dogs with razor sharp claws at the end of spindly metal legs. Those that had evaded the wizards attacks hadn’t paused at the moat; they had gone straight into the water and come up the other side without hesitation, climbing the walls with a speed that rivaled the spiders that had so recently been trying to sneak in.

  They had almost overwhelmed the men-at-arms who guarded the walls. The machines’ metal bodies were difficult to damage with normal weapons, and their claws tore into the soldiers with deadly ease. Cyhan, Gram, and Alyssa had been busy then, trying to prevent them from overwhelming the defenders.

  Even with the help of so many wizards, it had been a close fight. And through it all, Matthew had kept himself apart, watching from one of the towers and engaging only those that came close to his observation point.

  Karen had stayed with him through most of it, providing the bulk of the magical support for that corner of the walls and occasionally relaying his instructions to the others. Her ability to teleport anywhere at a moment’s notice made her invaluable for carrying warnings to the others or stopping surprise attacks.

  And there had been plenty of surprises. The enemy had used intense attacks on one side to draw defenders away from other areas, only to send hundreds of previously unseen crawlers up the wall in the section that was least defended. The moat had worked against them in that regard. Their enemy didn’t need to breathe and could hide beneath the water for extended periods of time before emerging suddenly.

  Yet, Matthew had anticipated every ploy the enemy used.

  Karen had just teleported back to his side. She was breathing hard from her latest exertions. Magic was just as tiring as swinging a sword, more so in some ways. A warrior didn’t have to worry about swinging his sword so many times that his body died of simple exhaustion, but that wasn’t the case for wizards.

  Karen’s exhaustion had reached a level she hadn’t known was possible. She had used so much power that she felt as though she would collapse at any moment. And yet there was still more power in her. Power she had to be careful not to use, lest she use so much her body could no longer keep her heart and lungs working. That was the danger of magic. Unlike physical exercise, the human body had no natural protections to prevent the user from going too far and killing herself from overuse.

  And still Matthew refused to use his power to assist. He was standing next to one of the merlons, staring outward with eyes that seemed to see everything and nothing at the same time. Karen stared at him worriedly. He was so still that if it weren’t for the wind stirring his hair, she might have thought him a statue, and the light reflected from the lake on that side of the castle made his blue eyes appear silver.

  “I can’t do much more,” she told him. “I’m almost done, and the others are just as tired. If they keep this up, we’ll be overrun.”

  She wasn’t sure he had even heard her, but after half a minute, Matthew answered, “Just a little longer, Karen. They’re almost here.”

  Karen looked at him in alarm. “They? What do you mean?”

  “The main force,” said Matthew, his voice dead and emotionless. “This was all to soften us up, to wear us down so we wouldn’t damage their most valuable asse
ts.”

  “Well, it’s worked!” said Karen, her voice rising to a higher pitch as she struggled to contain her panic. “We can’t take anymore, and now you’re saying this was just the warmup.”

  A cry went up from the north wall, and Karen saw the crawlers were swarming again. Only a few guards were left there, and as she looked on she saw two of them eviscerated by shining claws as the crawlers came up in numbers too great to stop. She started to teleport, but Matthew chose that moment to speak. “Don’t.”

  Another man died as she hesitated. “What do you mean? Don’t? They’re dying!”

  “That’s the last feint,” said Matthew. “Gram can handle it. The losses will be heavy, but he will clean up the last of them before it gets out of control. I need the last of your power.”

  “How do you know that? They’re dying! I can help them,” she argued.

  Matthew turned to look at her, fixing her with eyes that were pools of molten silver. “If you do, we all die. There’s a larger group behind the tree line to the east. They’ll come through the hole in the wall if they aren’t destroyed.”

  “What hole?” she asked.

  “Another minute,” said Matthew. “When I give the word, I want you to take me to the trees on the west side. After that leave me and come back for the dragons, Cyhan, and Alyssa. Take them to the same point on the east side. Leave Gram here to finish the ones coming over the wall.”

  “What about the wizards?”

  “They stay. They’ve done enough. If you take any of them, they’ll die,” he told her.

  Karen blinked, feeling tears of frustration beginning to well up in her eyes. “What about me? I’m not sure I have enough left to make that many trips.”

  “You do,” he said confidently. “Once for me, twice more for the Zephyr, Cyhan and Alyssa, and one last teleport to bring yourself back here. You can rest then.”

  “Can’t Zephyr just fly them over there?” she pointed out.

  Matthew shook his head. “No, they’ll lose the element of surprise.” Then he stopped, tilting his head to one side with an odd expression on his face. “Get ready. I need you to take me in about fifteen seconds.”

  “You’re insane,” she said. “Where is this coming from?”

  “Karen,” said Matthew. His eyes changed back to blue suddenly, and his face grew serious. “After you take me and then teleport the others, you have to come back. When you do, go to the dungeon.”

  “Why?”

  “Most of the castle will be safe, but I can’t be certain where the attacks will hit. There are too many variables still. The dungeon will be safe. Anywhere else and you might die,” he explained. Then he held out his hand. “Now.”

  Exhausted, frustrated, and angry, she took it. Karen wanted to refuse, but over the past few days she had seen his predictions come true too often to ignore his words. Gritting her teeth, she summoned a portion of her nearly depleted aythar and teleported him to the tree line to the west.

  Matthew released her hand immediately after they arrived. “Go,” he commanded. “You have less than a minute to get the others to the east side.”

  She struggled to marshal the necessary power to teleport back. Ordinarily it took little more than a thought to be wherever she wished, but now it was a test of will. After a few seconds she felt her aythar begin to move, but just before she teleported she saw the trees in front of them collapse, revealing a host of massive metal monsters. Then she was gone.

  Matthew stared at his three-legged adversaries. He had faced them before; they were known as tortuses back on Karen’s homeworld. They were a type of military machine that carried two main weapons, one a powerful gatling gun that could destroy people and small buildings with ease, the other a specialized type of artillery called a railgun. The railgun was slow to fire and reload, but its firepower was great enough to destroy castle walls, dragons, or pretty much anything else that got in its way.

  There were at least a hundred of them amassed there, a classic example of overkill. It would only take two or three to level Castle Lancaster if they were allowed to bombard the castle over a period of several minutes. This many could destroy everything with a single volley.

  Matthew walked forward, raising his metal fist as he went.

  The ground behind him exploded as high-velocity projectiles tore through the space he had been standing in, accompanied by the high-pitched whine and roar of gatling guns. He didn’t have a shield up to protect himself—it would have been pointless, the firepower present was such that a shield would merely have made him a target, and rendered him helpless when it soon collapsed under the withering fire.

  The tortuses were close, and he moved among them, using their bulk against them. Those farther away couldn’t target him because their line of fire was obscured by those closest to him. Even so, several managed to find clear lines of attack, and they fired with the perfect precision that only intelligent machines could accomplish.

  And yet, they missed.

  Just before every attack began, he moved, slipping into the shadow of a different tortus to avoid the blazing hail of bullets. In the open field, it would have been physically impossible. Each tortus could target and move with a speed that even his precognitive danger sense would have been useless, but in close among them, he was able to avoid them—barely.

  Shrapnel and ricochets made it even more difficult and at moments he was forced to accept minor injuries to avoid serious ones, but as he moved a long metal staff grew from his fist. It extended until it reached a length of six feet and then he gave the command to activate it, “Bree talto, eilen kon, sadeen lin. Amyrtus!”

  It was a complex activation sequence that set the parameters for the Fool’s Tesseract as it came into existence. In an instant, Matthew was surrounded by six planes of dimensional force that acted as one-way portals to a temporary dimension. Within the cube he was untouchable, while outside of it, air, dust, and weapons fire were all sucked inward as though gale-force winds had suddenly appeared—winds that all converged on a single point, the Fool’s Tesseract.

  The machines recognized his enchanted construct. They had seen it before on Karen’s world, and they began to scatter, moving to put as much distance between them and the black cube as possible.

  Within the dark interior, Matthew smiled. They didn’t have time to get far enough away. The Fool’s Tesseract only needed a few seconds to draw in enough matter to do what he needed. The interior dimension that had been accepting mass was very small, and depending on how much matter was within it, the result when it was expelled could range from explosively impressive to catastrophic. Given a small enough interior dimension and enough time and matter, it could potentially destroy the world.

  But not today, thought Matthew grimly. Then he voiced the command to invert the enchantment, “Rextalyet, amyrtus!” The result was an explosion powerful enough to cause the ground to buck beneath his feet, and as he was still safe within the cube that was the only part of the explosion he could sense.

  Outside, however, the tortuses were tossed and thrown into the air by a concussive blast so powerful it flattened the trees within fifty yards. The closest tortuses were torn apart, while those farther away were either damaged or sent tumbling if they were lucky.

  Matthew uttered a new activation command, changing the Fool’s Tesseract to a three-plane configuration. He now had a black plane above his head and two in front of him. The three square planes converged to form a pyramidal structure that protected him from attacks that might come from above or from the front and sides.

  He took the staff that anchored the Fool’s Tesseract into his other hand and then lifted his metal fist again, this time summoning two pieces of triangular metal that began to spin as soon as they appeared. With a thought he sent them away, and as they flew, black planes of dimensional force grew from them until each of the spinning weapons appeared to be a black circle.

  Desperate, the tortuses that had recovered began to fire on him once m
ore, heedless of whether their attacks might damage one another. They knew, with perfect machine logic, that unless he died soon, they were all lost.

  But Matthew knew the truth. They were already lost. Their destruction had been assured the moment he appeared on the field. Walking in a slow circle, he turned and angled the Fool’s Tesseract to block incoming attacks while mentally directing his spinning weapons. The black discs flew unerringly to find first one, two, then more of his enemies. The dimensional fields passed through the armored behemoths as though they were made of air, leaving severed wreckage in their wake.

  Unfortunately, there were still dozens of tortuses active, and he only had the two weapons with which to dispatch them. As their situation quickly became hopeless, those on the farthest edge of the battle accepted their fate and instead turned their railguns toward Castle Lancaster, hoping to inflict at least some damage before they were destroyed.

  He had expected that, though, and the spinning discs went after those first, ignoring the ones still firing on him. But I can’t get all of them in time, he thought regretfully. He knew, because he had been studying the possibilities for hours before the battle happened.

  Studying the future was tricky business. The farther out one looked, the fuzzier things got, and it was only in the closest moments that near certainty could be found. This was the best possibility he had been able to find, and it was nearing completion. His dimensional blades tore through his enemies, destroying all but one.

  He needed to redirect the blade closest to it, though. There were four tortuses firing on him from different directions, and if he didn’t kill one of those first, he would be hit by an attack he couldn’t block. That meant the final tortus aiming on Lancaster would get a single shot off with its railgun. Some things simply couldn’t be helped.