by Frank Morin
So Connor wrapped that little vial in flames and shattered it, planning to incinerate whatever devilry Hamish had prepared. He was not expecting the flash of phosphorescent brilliance that erupted from the vial.
Shouting in surprise and clapping his hand over his blinded eyes, Connor tapped slate and dropped straight into the earth and sealed the hole over his head. Half a heartbeat later a stream of hornets chewed into the ground.
What was Hamish thinking? Those hornets could have torn Connor apart if he was not tapping granite. He liked having friends with unshakable faith in his instincts, but maybe he needed to have a talk with Hamish. Sure, they liked testing diorite-puking on each other, Hamish regularly asked Connor to hit him with sensory deprivation, and they’d nearly killed themselves several times trying to figure out how many times they could make a death beam bounce between pieces of Sehrazad steel glass, but . . . Well, maybe discussing limits wouldn’t work so well.
So Connor erupted out of the ground and threw himself back into the air, again releasing a pulse of sound. His eyes still saw nothing but dancing light from that flare, but he didn’t need to see to find Hamish. This time he filled that burst of sound with a hundred times as much energy. It erupted away from him like a thunderclap. It caught Hamish, who was swooping toward his back, right in the face.
The blast knocked Hamish over backward several times. He fired thrusters all over his suit to stabilize his flight. It was an impressive display, but it took him too long. Connor tapped quartzite to pull the air away from Hamish and form an exhaustion pocket. Verena had mentioned they ran into weird holes like that sometimes when flying.
Hamish maxed his thrusters, but with so little air there was nothing for them to push against and he began to descend. Connor’s eyes finally cleared as Hamish twisted and threw a tiny dart in Connor’s direction. It flicked through the exhaustion pocket and the tiny thruster at the back then caught the air and accelerated the deadly little dart straight at Connor.
It was an impressive move. Connor would not waste that kind of creative battlefield thinking by simply deflecting the dart with a blast of air.
So he tapped basalt and fracked his arm.
The dart was coming fast, but in a fracked state everything seemed to slow as Connor’s speed and reflexes accelerated a hundredfold.
He caught the dart, turned it, and released it back at Hamish.
Builders were starting to include remote self-destruct triggers on all of their big explosive weapons, but that dart was too tiny. Hamish couldn’t stop it, although he contorted mightily in a vain attempt to escape. The dart exploded against his armored chest in a spray of blue powder.
He landed a second later and Connor released the exhaustion pocket. Hamish looked at his blue-coated chest in disgust. “That should have worked.”
“It almost did, but why blue?”
Hamish chuckled. “As if I’d let Verena choose the colors. She already names everything, and between how brilliant both she and Jean are, I can hardly get a creative idea to call my own anymore.”
No one but Hamish could have kept up with those girls. He could maintain a sugar-saturated state of pure inspiration longer than anyone Connor knew. Most of the people who tried his technique either fell into a sugar stupor, or got violently sick.
Connor raised a fist for Hamish to bump and said, “We need to finish those vomit rockets. You might have gotten me with one of those.”
Hamish grinned. “You’re on. Just don’t mention it around Jean.”
“Of course.” Connor tapped basalt and sprinted the last quarter mile to the second pylon. As he ran he thought of Jean and the terrible injuries he’s suffered at the battle of Merkland. Talk of missiles and explosions sometimes still made her uneasy. He and Hamish would perfect the vomit rocket, but not anywhere around Jean.
Luckily no one else intercepted him before he reached the pylon. He touched the rough stone with a grin. “Two down.”
Connor spared a glance to the north and tapped quartzite to scan the crowd of observers. He spotted all of the principal Althing leadership, plus General Wolfram, Gisela, and scores of people he didn’t know, but didn’t see anyone who stood out like Grandurian nobility who might be the much talked about new lord of the city. That was a problem he’d deal with later.
Time to win.
5
Never Underestimate Motivated Friends
Connor sprinted north toward the third pylon, almost a mile away. He kept a low tap rate with slate, questing in every direction for additional danger. He also pulsed out invisible bursts of echoing sound to make sure he didn’t miss anyone using the new Blind Curtains. Those were mechanicals rendered nearly invisible using reflective materials and carefully applied sightstones. The amazing development was being adapted for some of their flying machines to help conceal them from Obrioner scouts.
He found no threats as he quickly crossed the distance, but the closer he approached that pylon, the tenser he felt. There was no way they would give him a free leg of the challenge. Still no danger appeared as he slid to a stop a dozen feet short of the pylon and approached it cautiously, every sense alert.
He pulsed out a final blast of invisible light and sound. Only then, standing directly in front of the pylon, barely three strides away, did he realize that the sound was bouncing back from a space right in front of the pylon just large enough to conceal a person standing perfectly still and splitting the air around themselves with limestone. He hadn’t noticed it before because the rest of the sound bounced back from the pylon right behind the person, so the difference in bounce-back time was minimal. From a distance everything looked normal.
Shona erupted out of that invisible bubble with a shout of triumph, her powder-coated wooden sword already sweeping down toward his head.
Connor instinctively tapped granite and leaped to meet her. His close-in bash fighting instincts were honed from months of intense practice with Tomas, Cameron, and Erich. Shona was an excellent fighter, and if he hadn’t already been focusing on that spot, the ruse most likely would’ve worked. Instead, he caught her hand and stopped her sword half an inch above his head.
“Connor, you can be so annoying,” She grunted as she increased her tap rate, her muscles growing.
He’d perfected the art of annoying Shona during the hectic months when he’d served as her Guardian. Her devious plotting hadn’t worked out the way either of them had expected.
Shona max-tapped, her body shifted into perfectly sculpted lines. Connor could draw far more strength from granite than Shona, but he did not want to simply overpower her. His relationship with Shona was very complicated, but he still felt reluctant to damage her honor by making her look weak.
So as they struggled, her scent of roses wafting over him, her expression one of intense concentration, Connor winked and tapped external quartzite. He hit her with sensory deprivation.
Her skin returned to normal, her body shifting out of the perfect lines of living stone back to her excellent native figure, and complete calm settled over her exquisite features. Connor knew from experience how unnerving sensory deprivation could be. It robbed one of all their senses. It left them in a state of limbo even worse than that creative darkness that Evander had dropped over him earlier.
Hamish seemed to love it, particularly when Jean was nearby so she was the first thing he saw when he recovered. He claimed that everything seemed more vibrant right after being released from sensory deprivation. Most people just freaked out. Connor was not sure if Shona had ever experienced it.
So he gently took her sword from her grasp and scraped the flat of the blade down the center of her face, leaving a coating of pink powder behind. He also tapped chert and focused on Shona. Her thoughts seem to scream into his mind.
“Let me out! Connor, I know you can hear me. If you don’t release me this instant, I’ll rescind . . .”
She hesitated. One of her favorite threats when he was her Guardian was to rescind patronage, but
now they both knew that was a lie. Still, for most of her life she had believed the lie, and old habits died hard.
Connor turned her slightly to face the pylon, touched it himself, then released her from sensory deprivation.
Shona gasped and lunged forward. Instead of grappling with Connor, she collided with the pylon, tripped, and plopped down on her backside.
Connor was already sprinting away to the west, his legs fracked. Tapping serpentinite, he captured the colorful curses that she shouted after him. Hamish would have loved to hear them, so he was tempted to save a few of the choicest ones to share later, but resisted the urge.
There must be some kind of final defenses ready to block him from the fourth pylon, but he’d already faced most of his closest friends, and he was starting to feel a little impatient. So he decided to give the watchers a show. He was running low on powder to fuel his primary affinities, but he still had plenty of stone left to fuel his mighty tertiary affinities. He decided to demonstrate what he could do with the elements. That meant tapping porphyry again to help solidify his connection. He could tap two igneous stones simultaneously but was already using granite and basalt.
Which to purge? He could absorb more powder quickly if the need arose, particularly if he absorbed only enough porphyry to keep the connection going. He could move fast with the elements, so decided to purge basalt. Hopefully he was making the right choice.
Connor purged, absorbed a little porphyry and tapped it. At the same time he called upon the elements. The rampager arose in his heart, pacing in its restraints, growling low. Connor got the sense that for some reason it didn’t like him calling it and the elements at the same time. That was strange. He’d never felt anything like that before, but didn’t have time to wonder about it.
As always, the clothing worn by the mental projections of the elements was striped with bands of both red and green, representing the different frequencies of power that fueled the affinities. Life had been simpler when he could only access the lower frequency red energy, but his mightiest new abilities were tied to the difficult higher frequency green. He’d accessed it after his second ascension, but the two sources of Petralist power tended to crash into each other and cancel each other out. Tapping porphyry helped solidify his connection to the green frequency without red interfering.
Connor also tapped chert. Like porphyry, the sedimentary stone was somehow linked more strongly to green, and when he tapped both stones his elemental control increased dramatically. The elements seemed more content to work together than ever, even though his tape rate with porphyry and chert was still pretty low. That was a good sign. Kilian had promised that eventually he wouldn’t need to keep tapping porphyry to stabilize them.
Good, because his supply was getting low, and no one but High Lord Dougal had known the location to quarry more. There had to be someone living who knew, maybe one of the cutters who had worked at that secret quarry, but no one knew how to identify them. He had access to a better supply of chert, but it tended to get consumed fast, so managing that supply was challenging too.
With his connection stabilized, Connor tapped Water. She stood closest to him and seemed to approve the fact that he called upon her first. He pulled water out of the ground and wrapped himself in a sphere of glittering silver liquid. Then he called upon Fire, who laughed silently as the wild insanity of his element swept through Connor, filling his mouth with the taste of ash and creating the scent of charred wood in the air. Connor was so glad that walking with fire no longer hurt like it had before his second ascension. Crimson flames appeared out of thin air and wove among the water. Fire grinned at Water and she winked back. That was the closest they ever came to touching.
Earth and Air came next, adding snaking lines of brown and ropes of translucent air to the bright mix wrapping Connor. Finally he drew upon serpentinite, wrapping some of his favorite sounds into the sphere, including Verena’s laughter, Jean’s beautiful singing voice, and Hamish’s joyful cry when he witnessed a tray of fresh cookies drawn from an oven.
Surrounded by the impenetrable sphere of mixed elements, Connor set it spinning to accelerate west. He kept his arms and legs spread eagled, maintaining contact with the inner edge of the spinning sphere as it sped up. He’d used a similar technique, although only with water, to knock Gregor from his tower the day he’d freed Nicklaus and Verena from captivity in that little cave south of Alasdair.
With that act he’d broken with General Carbrey. He hadn’t comprehended what insane adventures would result from that decision, but he never regretted the choice.
Sure enough, as he closed on the last pylon, still nearly half a mile to the west, the Arishat League unleashed their weapons. Explosions of fire and waves of not-quite-lethal acid washed across his path, fired by Althing trebuchets and Tabnit death tubes that Hamish had dubbed Sparky Sparky Boom Drums. Connor really liked that name, but the Tabnit officers had seemed oddly insulted by it. Verena had settled on Death Tubes as a compromise since no one could pronounce the Tabnit native name for them.
The boom drums fired impressively explosive ordnance, but he rolled right through them and everything else the Arishat League rained across his path. He grinned as he accelerated more and closed on the last pylon. Nothing would block him from this easy victory.
He barely noticed four steel pillars rising out of the ground on either side of his path. He wasn’t sure if it was Evander or Ilse or Aifric pushing them up, but they were moving far too slow to interrupt him. Filled with confidence, he did not alter course but zipped right between the posts.
Sparks exploded from each post, and blue lightning rippled between them. Somehow it punched right through his elemental barrier and sizzled against his armor. It plunged through him, making every muscle spasm with pain. The shock of it felt like that time he’d unleashed his father’s diorite hammer to blow the mountain above Alasdair.
That blast of energy severed all of his affinity connections, and his elemental shield shredded. Connor tried to scream as his body tumbled forward, but his throat was seized shut and he couldn’t breathe. His vision blurred as the world spun out of control and all he heard was crackling.
As he tumbled to the ground, he heard a voice shout in his mind, “Keep rolling, Connor! Get out of the field.”
He couldn’t see, could barely think, but instinctively followed the voice, rolling over the grass the best he could, despite the wild convulsing of his muscles. Somehow he managed to keep tumbling until he rolled beyond the far side of the box formed by those posts. As soon as he did, the deadly current cut off, releasing him from its brutal grip. He collapsed to the grasses, his muscles still twitching uncontrollably, just happy he could breathe and think again. A few more seconds of that might have killed him.
Where had that voice come from? He looked around, but saw no one. Had he imagined it? The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
“Ow,” he groaned. He really should have paid more attention to the Arishat research teams. They’d developed something truly painful. It had rattled him, body and mind.
For a moment he let himself recover and decided he hadn’t actually heard anyone. As control returned to his limbs, he smelled lightning wafting in the air like sharp-scented smoke, and the taste in his mouth was like charred steel. He tapped sandstone, and healing warmth flowed into him from the sandstone pendant affixed to his necklace of stones. It was a rather plain stone, smoothed to a cylindrical shape. It lacked the sheer, concentrated power of the sculpted pendant that his Aunt Ailsa had gifted to him months ago.
That one had crumbled to dust after the battle of Merkland, its powers exhausted. The one he wore now was a gift from Gisela. It held far more power than an unsculpted piece, but she had lacked time to work the stone to the concentrated magnitude of Ailsa’s master works. Still, he appreciated having it.
As sandstone washed away the worst of his aches, he managed to sit up, tap quartzite, and glance over at the distant observation post. Mo
st of the observers were still hidden behind the huge screen, but several of the Varvakins, dressed in gleaming plate armor, had stepped around it and were jumping up and down in glee, hands raised in victory.
The test was supposed to prove he could defeat whatever they threw at him, so it rankled that they seemed so pleased to have disabled him. Maybe they hoped their invention could hurt the queen too. If it could, then Connor would celebrate with them because that meant he wouldn’t be the only possible hope for the revolution.
All he knew about the Varvakin inventions was that they worked with stones that snatched steel from a distance, and also somehow harnessed a power they had referred to as the Merry Dancers. That ignorance had just cost him a very painful crash. He couldn’t wait to learn more.
Captain Ilse rose out of the ground nearby, carrying Ivor out of concealment with her. Ivor’s hands were already encased with water and fire, and he looked eager to jump into the fight with Connor. The two of them hesitated, looking surprised to see him so disabled. His connection to his elemental affinities still felt shaky. He doubted he could defeat the wily captain with earth, let alone best Ivor with water and fire at the same time.
“Most of today’s run was impressive, but you still failed to reach the final pylon,” Ilse pointed out.
She looked willing to wait for him to make a move before crushing him. Ivor was grinning, with flames curling around his teeth. He looked confident they’d easily stop him.
“What pylon?” Connor asked with a grin.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Ivor snapped and together they spun to glance at the final pylon.
He should have attacked because Connor was already tapping sandstone again, but this time externally. The boiling, destructive power of sandstorm ignited from the stone, and he cast it at the pylon.
He’d practiced with sandstorm through the winter, although he hadn’t yet learned to enjoy the process of tearing things apart at a fundamental level. All the stones with both internal and external focused powers resulted in opposite effects, but none seemed as dramatic as sandstone.
