by Frank Morin
Hamish laughed, overjoyed that he’d finally gotten to name something. Connor liked the name. It perfectly represented what they were planning.
Verena added, “We considered the question of placement, and there’s some benefit to positioning it closer to the trap, but we feel that we’ll get a better overall effect by placing it around the convergence point and cutting off the sandstone power at the source.”
Connor sincerely hoped it worked.
Hamish rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “So here’s the plan. We activate this thing, and you try healing each other.”
“It’s hard to heal if we’re not injured,” Aifric pointed out.
“That’s why we were bash fighting,” Rory said with a grin. “Now that we’re warmed up, we’re going to resume, but keep our tap rate low enough that we can get hurt easier.”
Tomas and Cameron didn’t look as enthusiastic about that part, but seemed willing to pay the price in order to get a good bash fight. Erich was already humming a battle tune to himself. Connor had seen the three of them fight more than once, and he doubted they’d hold back. He didn’t doubt they’d give him and Aifric plenty to do.
Verena extracted a small piece of sandstone, sculpted into a highly polished sphere. “Activating Sucker Punch . . . Now!”
Connor expected some sign that the mechanical was active, but those big blocks just sat there. He glanced around, and everyone else was doing the same.
“Is it working?” Shona asked.
Hamish grinned. “Oh, yeah. It’s sucking in a ton of energy already.”
“I don’t feel any different,” Aifric said.
Connor tapped sandstone and felt available power like always. When he tapped the deeper aspect of his fleshcrafting, he sensed both red and green energies flowing through him. After a moment, he felt a slight undercurrent of the red energy, as if something was tugging at the flow. The tug increased and the flow of healing power lessened.
“I feel it!” he shouted, exulting.
“Time to test it,” Rory cried. He turned to his men just in time to catch Tomas’ fist with his face. The blow rocked him back, but he kicked out, knocking Tomas stumbling.
Erich happily grabbed Tomas by the head, yanked him off the ground, and flung him into Cameron. The two went down in a heap, but leaped back to their feet. Erich plowed into them and the three launched into a brutal bash fight. Erich started loudly singing his Grandurian battle song.
Tomas ducked under one mighty blow and slammed a fist into Erich’s ribs hard enough to blow a torc in half. Erich grunted and missed a beat in his song.
“Grandurian songs always sounded like sick cattle begging for a mercy killing,” Cameron said as he and Erich traded punches.
Tomas laughed. “More like a sick mmppfh.” The words cut off abruptly as Erich shoved a rock-hard fist into his mouth.
Shona jumped into the fray with a flying kick into Erich’s back, knocking him off his feet. Anika rushed in to defend her brother and punched Shona back down when she rose.
Connor really wanted to join them, but shouldn’t he focus on the healing power test?
Softly whistling to herself, Ilse moved lightly into the fray, her movements dainty compared to the brutish stomping of the others. Sometimes Connor forgot she had primary affinity with granite. She danced into the bash fight, flowing around the mighty blows of the bigger men, or somehow deflecting them and turning her opponents’ strength against them. With seeming ease, she sent Tomas tumbling and sidestepped Shona’s charge, sending her plowing into Cameron just like she had knocked her into the doorframe of Lord Gavin’s manor house during that very first fight all those months ago.
Even Evander and Ivor joined the fight, and soon the entire bunch of them were laughing and cheering each other on as they beat on each other. Connor laughed, pleased that they could share such a happy memory before launching their deadly fight against the queen.
Hamish flew over the group, thrusters of his battle suit drowned out by the shouting of the fighters. He fired a missile, striking the ground right next to where Shona was wrestling with Ivor. The explosion knocked them both tumbling, and Evander punched them both back off their feet as they rose.
Aifric sighed. “The sacrifices we make for research.”
“I know. I want to get into it too,” Connor agreed.
“If you’re not going to, would you mind sharing some granite with me?” Lady Briet asked.
That caught him by surprise. Lady Briet wore one of her fine dresses, after all. She wasn’t exactly young any more, and usually let others do the sweaty fighting.
She smiled at his reaction. “Come now, Connor. Who wouldn’t want a chance to experience life as a Boulder at least once?”
“All right,” he agreed with a grin, thrilled that she wanted to get involved.
General Wolfram said, “Better loan me some too. I’ll see she doesn’t get hurt.”
“You just don’t want to miss the chance to punch me in the face,” she laughed, again surprising Connor with that easy banter.
He shrugged. “We rarely get to slug it out with those we spend so much time negotiating with.”
“I agree,” she said sincerely. “Together, then?”
He extended an arm in a gentlemanly way, which she took.
In a moment, Connor tapped chert, obsidian, and sandstone, plus granite for the loan. He felt the drag on his sandstone more severely. It was definitely working. The two of them grinned as they swelled with granite power, and didn’t even wait to join the rest of the bash fight before Lady Briet punched at Wolfram.
He was by far the more experienced soldier, and seemed to be expecting the blow. He parried and punched her in the nose. Connor doubted the punch hurt, but she was clearly not used to getting hit and recoiled out of habit.
So Wolfram picked her up and threw her into the middle of the bash fight shouting, “Make way for Lady Briet!”
Verena laughed and took Connor’s hand. “We should arrange parties like this more often. Lately we’ve been far too grim.”
“I totally agree.”
Together they watched the intense bash fight for a couple minutes. No one held back, but beat on each other with epic abandon. Lady Briet threw herself into the middle of the fray, shrieking something in Althing that Connor hoped was a battle cry, even though it sounded more like she’d pulled a muscle. It seemed everyone wanted a chance to participate in international diplomacy because they all made a point to punch her face several times.
Finally Aifric interrupted. She nodded to Kilian, who had stood beside her while they watched the fight, and he shouted, “Enough! Time to test the healing.”
No one stopped. It took another five minutes to pull everyone apart. Connor had to tap earth and physically drag some of them away from each other before they relented. He didn’t blame them. It was extremely difficult to stop when one was immersed in such a fun bash fight.
The battered group presented themselves to Connor and Aifric for healing. Most of them were bruised, but not badly damaged. Lady Briet was the exception. Her dress was badly torn, she limped, and she was missing four teeth, which she displayed proudly through a wide grin.
“My dear Connor, you gave me a princely gift today. Thank you so much!” she gushed as he healed her.
His red-frequency healing power was dwindling fast, and he barely managed to heal her bruises and her injured knee. Then he switched to green frequency power to fleshcraft her teeth back. The connection seemed weaker than usual because of the red-frequency dearth, but he still managed to access fleshcrafting anyway. Once the connection solidified, he felt no lack of green-energy power. She sighed as she touched her restored teeth, looking more content in her dirt-streaked, bedraggled way than he’d ever seen.
Once everyone was healed, Connor conferred with Aifric. She said, “I can barely heal a scratch any more. My healing power is simply gone, even though my piece of sandstone is fine.”
“Me too,�
� he confirmed. “Although I can still reach fleshcrafting.”
Kilian grimaced. “If mother can still fleshcraft, we might be accomplishing less than we hope.”
“It was more difficult to make the connection,” Connor said. “If we can convince her that healing is broken, she might not realize she can get past it if she just focuses on green. At least, not before we kill her.”
“It’s worth the attempt,” Shona said, and everyone else nodded agreement.
“Can we enhance the mechanical to influence green frequency power too?” Ivor asked.
“I can’t sense the different frequencies, so I don’t think so, at least not yet,” Verena said with an apologetic shrug.
“Maybe if we can find that Builder threshold and figure out how to get through it we might be able to,” Hamish said.
“Attempting an unknown threshold will take careful preparation, and we don’t have time to wait,” Kilian said. “We’ve still got a better chance than we’ve had before, and we have to hit her before she begins the march from Crann.”
Shona pushed her hair back from her face, looking almost totally unaffected by the recent bash fight. “Now that we’ve proven this mechanical will work, we need to finalize a plan of attack.”
84
The Need for Burned Cookies
We have to lure her out of Crann alone,” Connor said as the group drew into a circle to discuss the plan.
Kilian nodded. “Like the Battle of Vallanes. We need a powerful lure.”
“Won’t she be suspicious it’s a trap if you’ve used that approach before?” Wolfram asked.
Evander said, “The rooster greets the new day with undiminished enthusiasm, but the gathering clouds of an approaching storm paint the sky in countless variety.”
Connor was glad he’d reverted to Sentry speak, even though he wasn’t sure how to interpret that one. Evander had spoken clearly far too often of late, and it left Connor feeling rattled.
“What does that mean?” Cameron asked with a frown.
“Means we get chicken for dinner,” Tomas said with a grin.
“Let others interpret deeper meanings,” Ilse said with a smile. “He suggested that although the ruse might seem similar to ones she’s seen before, we can leverage different approaches that she cannot help but respond to.”
They considered that for a moment, and Connor discarded several wild ideas about how to lure out the queen. Too many of them resulted in pitched battle with her army, which they needed to avoid.
“She hates Builders, right?” Hamish asked.
“And she thinks you dead, right?” Rory added.
Verena said, “She knows someone survived. She saw you outside of Jagdish.”
“And she must know that Builders helped us survive her swarm,” Shona added.
“But she doesn’t know which of us are alive,” Hamish reminded her.
Connor liked the idea. The queen’s unreasonable hatred for Builders included fear of their powers that he really wished they understood. But they might be able to leverage it. “Showing her that Hamish or Verena still lives would definitely enrage her.”
“Except she’d just boil them out of the sky,” Kilian pointed out.
“We have blind coal,” Hamish protested.
“Not enough to escape if she decides to actively hunt you,” Kilian said, and Connor suspected he was right.
Ilse said, “I’m afraid only Connor has a chance to keep ahead of her long enough to draw her out.”
Verena gripped Connor’s hand, suddenly looking nervous. “You can’t be suggesting Connor launch a solo assault against Crann.”
“She thinks Connor and I are both dead or captured, after all,” Ivor said thoughtfully.
“And she has expressed interest in capturing you,” Kilian added. “Perhaps she won’t try annihilating you right away.”
“But we want her to chase him,” Wolfram said. “So we need her mad enough to abandon her army and take off after him.”
“I can definitely irritate her enough to get her to chase me,” Connor promised. He wrapped an arm around Verena to comfort her and added, “I’m ascended now. I can move as fast as she can, and I should be able to hold her off long enough to draw her out.”
“If you get caught in the middle of an army at Crann, not even you can fight free of all those Petralists and the queen,” Verena protested.
“I don’t see a better way,” Hamish said apologetically.
“But Verena has a point,” Evander said, again speaking clearly. That was so unnerving.
Aifric, who had been looking distracted, her lips moving silently in a group conference in her head, looked up. “I think the answer is obvious. Connor needs to use stilling on the army.”
“Yeah! That’s right. You stilled all of Merkland,” Hamish exclaimed. Several of the others voiced support, looking enthusiastic about the idea, but Verena hugged him closer, searching his gaze with her own. He’d confided in her how difficult stilling Merkland had been, and how hard it had been to stop.
Connor licked suddenly dry lips. They had a point, but he hesitated, thinking back to that singular experience. When Harley detonated the rage bomb over Merkland, it had threatened to destroy the entire city from within, everyone ripping each other apart in a fit of mindless rage. He’d stilled them all, sucking their life force away, preventing them the freedom to move and to commit murder.
He’d saved tens of thousands of lives, but the cost still haunted him. Some of them had died. The weak or wounded, those with too little life force remaining had succumbed to his insidious power in those critical moments. Releasing them would have resulted in even more death, but he’d felt every one of those lives as they were snuffed out and sacrificed to him.
Part of him had exulted in the experience. That part haunted him the most. That flood of energy had been intoxicating, a wondrous thing that filled him with life and strength and power and glory. For a moment he’d struggled to control the overwhelming urge to hold onto stilling longer than needed, to draw out more life from those helpless people.
He’d unleashed stilling upon a defenseless city in order to save it, but he’d very nearly ended up destroying them all.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Verena said, interrupting the happy chatter, still holding Connor’s gaze with hers.
“Of course it is,” Hamish retorted. He punched Connor on the shoulder. “I bet you can still more people than ever now that you’ve ascended.”
Connor feared he might be right. If he stilled more, even for a short time, he could use that power to fight the queen, to free the very people he leeched life from. But if he did, could he stop himself from losing control?
“Stilling so many is dangerous,” he said finally.
Kilian stepped closer, studying Connor closely. Connor read understanding in his gaze. Kilian had taught him stilling, understood the price one paid to wield it. He expected Kilian to suggest a different way, but Kilian nodded slowly after a moment and said softly, “I see you fear what might happen.”
“Wait, what would happen to Connor if he stilled others?” Hamish asked. “I thought it was affecting them.”
“There’s danger in too much of a good thing,” Connor told his friend. “Like that time we snuck that huge Sogail cake out of Neasa’s bakery the night before the Sogail when we were seven.”
Hamish nodded in instant understanding. Verena looked from Connor to Hamish, frowning, and asked, “What happened?”
“We ate the entire thing, of course,” Hamish said proudly. “It was a special cake, three feet long, five layers, should have fed twenty people.”
“You ate it all?” Lady Briet asked, her tone awed.
“We certainly did,” Connor said. “And it nearly killed us.”
“I was so sick the next day I couldn’t eat anything until lunchtime,” Hamish said, his expression turning anguished from the memory of missing the first hours of the feast.
Connor said, “S
tilling a lot of people is like that. It’s wondrous in a way I can’t explain, but it’s very hard to stop once I turn it on.”
“If you don’t, you could kill them all,” Verena said softly, looking worried.
“Or kill yourself,” Shona added.
Tomas shrugged, not looking concerned. “That’s why you get the fancy socks, lad. Big responsibility comes with great perks, but hazards that you’ve got to deal with.”
“Socks?” Shona asked, looking confused.
Cameron spoke up. “Course. Simple bash fighters get wool socks, what with all our marching duty and everything. Leaders have to walk more careful or they scatter all them deep thoughts they need to make, so they need fancy socks to make the right padding.”
Connor smiled, his tension easing under their banter. “I don’t think I ever got fancy socks.”
Tomas and Cameron both looked offended and turned to Kilian. Tomas said, “You’re risking the fate of the revolution over skimping on socks? Really?”
Kilian chuckled. “I’ll see to it that Connor gets excellent socks before the battle.” That mollified them and Kilian added, “The fact that you understand the risk and fear it makes me optimistic that you’ll be able to control yourself.”
“Besides, if you get distracted, the queen will rip out your mind,” Hamish added.
“Not helpful,” Verena said.
“I thought it was. Connor works best when motivated,” Hamish responded simply.
“He’s right. I can do it,” Connor said. He didn’t see that he had a choice, but the fact that he’d be facing a tight schedule helped. “And Hamish I’ll need your help preparing what I’ll need to get her mad enough to chase me.”
“What do you need Hamish for?” Verena asked, clearly wishing he’d said he needed her help preparing instead.
He grinned at her. “Because Hamish has been helping me perfect the vomit rocket.”
