by JD Cole
“I no like bother Chris and Erica, they need their time together. If they notice we went bag, you can tell them we had for spock something? And then… just tell ‘um we go meet them bumbai’s?”
“Spock? Bum-bize??” Kim asked.
“Certainly,” Yennis nodded, understanding even Devon’s pidgin slang.
“Mahalo.” Devon bowed awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his arms. Yennis looked around and shifted uncomfortably. Zaiyensa sighed, gripping Devon’s shoulder and pulling him up.
“What?” Devon asked.
She merely sighed once more and led them from the room.
« CHAPTER 25 »
Restraint
Blademaster Denn raised his sword and shouted to everyone around him. “Troops, to me!”
Elves, dwarves, and vampyres rallied at his order. Three vampyres were now part of the battleprok, and two of them were sorcerers. Using them strictly to defend against magic, Denn had led the two with Maxillion, along with twelve of his most skilled elves and dwarves against a group of irenaks he’d targeted as the weakest point of the goblins’ front line. The remainder of his soldiers he’d left to continue pushing with another battleprok against another possible weak spot. The irenaks grouped here seemed tired and unfocused, and did not have many goblins among them to help support. In fact, there was a noticeable dearth of goblins today all across the field.
Denn had judged correctly, having almost immediately wiped out close to forty irenaks and goblins. At his command, the rest of his battleprok rushed to penetrate the line and attack the gates themselves. His sorcerers were just managing to shield everyone from most of the angry spells being hurled at them, but they wouldn’t be able to keep it up. The rest of the sprite army saw this and also began rallying to the opening Denn had made in the line. Vampyres and wolves rushed from Matari’s gates to stop them, but this time, the sprite-loyal wolves, vampyres, and kathet were co-mingled with the army on the field as quick-reaction-forces, and they also rushed into the breach along with the sea of battleproks that were converging like water into a drain.
The goblin-loyal reinforcements were going to hit Denn and his troops before the sprite reaction force could get there, however. Three wolves leapt down the hill ahead of the others, crashing into the midst of the elves and dwarves. The vampyre swordsman in Denn’s battleprok confronted one of the wolves on his own, leaving the elves and dwarves to try and manage the other two. Elves swarmed across the body of one of the wolves before it could use its sword. Three elves caught life-ending claws in their bodies, but the rest relentlessly stabbed and sliced at the creature, bringing it down within moments.
The last wolf, armed with sword and shield, ferociously attacked the soldiers surrounding him, successfully defending even as he killed one after another. Then his companions joined in the fight. Seventeen wolves and ten vampyres managed to stop the rush of several dozen elves and dwarves in their tracks. No one noticed when the first vampyre fell with a huge hole in his helmet. But by the time a third wolf’s head inexplicably exploded, the vicious fighting began to slow as everyone tried to figure out what was happening.
“Denn, keep pressing on!” the blademaster heard General Khun Rhee in his head. His voice was straining, with Matari’s wards outside the wall making several of his spells orders of magnitude more difficult than they should have been. “We are supporting you from here, get to those gates and hold them!”
Denn blocked an attack from a vampyre, who disappeared in retreat from Denn’s counterattack. “Fae, press on! This day is ours!” The blademaster turned his attention to a wolf who swung at him with its great cleaver. Denn ducked under the blade, feeling the air from it rush across the back of his neck. He gripped his sword in both hands, and with lightning speed he stabbed lightly into the narrow gap between his opponent’s upper and lower armor sections. Instead of driving the blade home, however, he swiftly cut across diagonally using one of his more difficult techniques, severing the thick leather strap that was helping to hold the wolf’s torso armor in place. Against anyone else, the thick leather would not have yielded so easily to a single sword slash, but the blademaster knew everything there was to know about defeating things with swords.
With the lower half of the armor no longer connected to the wolf’s belt, Denn stepped right up to the wolf just as it was raising its claws to attack. Denn somersaulted backward, using his boot to catch the bottom edge of the armor. It lifted just high enough, and just long enough, for the blademaster to spin his upper body in midair, swinging his sword two-handed under the lifted armor using the same technique he’d just used. His sword ran across the wolf’s belly like a knife through butter, and the creature howled in pain. The claw that was about to behead Denn went instead to catch the steaming entrails now spilling from its midsection. The wolf fell to its knees, where two dwarves and an elf ended its wailing, and its life.
~
“This was most unexpected,” Khun said, watching the mass of his army’s soldiers surging toward Matari’s gates. “Even with so many less goblins on the field… I wonder where they went?”
“I haven’t heard of too many battles that go exactly to plan,” Sean said. “At least it looks like this surprise is one in our favor.”
“You and your troops have my gratitude for reacting so quickly,” Khun replied.
“I’d rather not reveal all our cards just yet, but we’ll give you a fighting chance to take those gates, at least.” Sean looked over at Popper. “It’s ahead of schedule, but go ahead and have Dez and Charlie Brown start decapitating their leadership.”
“Roger that, sir,” Popper said.
Sean waved Khun Rhee’s attention to Matari. “That wall to right of the gate wall, what would you call it again? East? West? My compass doesn’t work here.”
Khun shook his head, pointing off to his left. “North is any direction toward Windham.” He pointed to his right. “South is any direction away from Windham.” He pointed slightly less to his right. “East is where the sun rises, which changes with the seasons. So that is the eastern wall.”
“That is confusing as hell,” Sean growled. The he held up the tablet with the overhead drone feed. “Right then, we’ve discussed the different sections that look promising,” he pointed out several portions of the wall that were thinner than the rest. “Based on my snipers’ positioning, I’m going to go ahead and start removing the enemy’s archers… here, and here on that wall, so we can get the so-called ‘sapper’ team moving into place. It’s sooner than we talked about, but if things go smoothly, maybe we’ll blow out that wall now, and take some of the pressure off your troops at the gate.”
“I will communicate with my commanders immediately,” Khun promised.
Beside them, Popper was on the radio. “Sniper teams, come in. Ichabod. I repeat, Ichabod. Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledged, Ichabod,” Dez radioed back, followed by the sniper aliased “Charlie Brown”.
~
The three necromancers atop the walls attacking the oncoming army were now joined by five more. The sky began darkening as they readied a lightning spell. Denn’s sorcerers looked up in dread, but began chanting their own spells in an attempt to interrupt or cancel the necromancers’ imminent attack. They could sense Khun Rhee’s magic at work as well, but they had no idea of knowing whether it would help.
Suddenly, two loud BOOMS! were accompanied by two of the necromancers disappearing from the wall, and the gathering storm clouds began to clear. Two other necromancers quickly ducked down in cover, but a third was spun around by an invisible impact, his head spinning around almost three times more than his body had before his corpse crumpled. The left side of his helmet, while stopping the bullet, had caved halfway into his skull. The remaining necromancers quickly retreated, their lightning spell collapsing before it could be completed.
“Are they actually controlling the weather?” Dez murmured to himself, carefully resting his huge .50 caliber anti-materiel rifle in
place on a huge, trunk-like branch. He shuffled himself over to his sniper-modified immer rifle.
His spotter was on a branch above him. “Sure looked like it, didn’t it? Can you imagine making Hawaii weather in New York during the winters? Okay, Charlie Brown’s claimed all the alligators on the right side of the wall, so I’m tagging on the left for you.”
“Roger.”
Smaller CRACKS! echoed from the distant woods, and irenak archers atop the wall began falling one after the other. Eventually, the remaining archers realized they were being picked off by some mysterious attacker, and they followed the necromancers in retreat.
Dez tapped into the video feed from the reconnaissance drones and saw there was still one necromancer atop the wall, giving orders to the monster soldiers around him. He was crouched low… but against the far wall, not the near one. The Russian sniper figured he could work with that.
“You thinking of using a birdy?” his spotter asked him.
“Da,” Dez nodded, shifting his position back to where his heavier rifle sat. He unloaded it, then replaced the magazine. The cartridges in the new mag were tipped with orange colored bullets which could not be mistaken for standard rounds. He quickly hooked a mesh bag to a latch near the ejector that was made to catch cartridges: these weren’t just cheap brass.
He next wirelessly linked the rifle’s scope to the drone’s sensors, allowing the computers to run the calculations for him after he designated his target. The rifle scope then generated two small crosshairs, one blue and the other red. He carefully aimed the barrel until the crosshairs lined up and turned green. Then he fired.
The hummingbird round exploded from its special casing, zooming toward Matari at an angle that should have missed the wall entirely. This bullet however, had a tiny processor that controlled several little curved fins which popped in and out of the bullet on command as it spun. Using the targeting solution calculated by the rifle, the bullet used these fins to change the bullet’s trajectory as if by magic. It took less than two seconds for the bullet to zoom over the battlefield, arcing like a boomerang at a slight downward angle where it slid between two parapets, barely missing the top of the wall as it zipped toward its target. The vampyre slammed into the ground sideways as if a car had just run him over.
“That is some impressively tough armor they are wearing,” Dez remarked.
“Yeah, but damn if you didn’t turn that helmet into a juicer!” the spotter agreed. Via the drone’s feed, they could see blood pouring steadily onto the stone from inside the intact-but-horribly-warped helmet. They also saw one more archer pay for looking over a parapet, as Charlie Brown put a .338 up its nose and out the back of its alligator-like head.
“These video-game bullets are going to make me obsolete,” Dez joked, retrieving the hi-tech cartridge from the pouch to keep for reloading later.
“Not at nine hundred dollars a shot, they ain’t,” the spotter reassured him.
The enemy was clearing off the wall tops pretty quick now, they saw. Dez opened his radio. “Popper, this is Dez. Ichabod is complete, over.”
“Acknowledged, Dez, Charlie Brown, good job. Boss is moving into position now, keep an eye on that wall for him in case those gators decide to get brave. We don’t want anybody spotting him just yet.”
~
Only two vampyres remained of the goblins’ initial reinforcements, but three entire battleproks had now made it to the front gates. More goblin reinforcements were trying to get out onto the field now, but the sheer number of sprite-loyal soldiers kept them bottle-necked and easily overwhelmed. Sean’s snipers were also liberally picking off targets of opportunity, focusing on the wolves and vampyres. They’d switched over to their sniper-configured immer rifles, saving the .50s for higher-value targets. However, several vampyres were wearing high-quality armor and were escaping with nothing more than severe aches and disorientation when hit by the bullets. This then left them vulnerable to the elves and dwarves, who were in no merciful mood.
In the confusion of melee, five battleproks broke away from the battle and began moving around to the other wall that had just been cleared by the snipers. At the same time, Boss led his team —five ValianTs, four MIRKs, five Paladins, twenty elf soldiers, a mule drone and a sprite wizard— over the berm they’d been concealed behind. The group moved in a quick march, the elves keeping up easily despite their size. In fact, they were moving more quickly than the drone, which lagged when trotting uphill.
“There,” one of the elves pointed. “Near that scorch mark on the wall.” There were several little bodies on the ground, surrounded by packs and boxes. “One of our sapper teams attempted to breach here.” The dead gnomes were covered in arrows and sword slashes.
Boss nodded at the grim sight. “How’d they know this was one of the thinner areas of the wall?”
“Dulumin have a talent for sensing the unseen,” the elf offered. “They possess hearing unmatched in the faery kingdoms.”
“Well, hopefully we’ll be avenging them for you soon.”
“We are ready,” the elf agreed, brandishing his sword.
~ ~ ~ ~
Devon sat next to Kelli on the bed, holding her cold hand as Dufangen and Sorvir explained the situation. Kim and Zaiyensa stood at the back of the room, and the Dragon finally acknowledged Kim’s repeated sideways glances.
“I am not your rival, Ms. Greenfield,” Zaiyensa said. “You have nothing to fear from me. Devon’s affections belong you alone.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “I- I didn’t say anything! Are you reading my mind?”
“I do not need to. I can feel your insecurity.”
“Hey, I’m not insecure! I’m just, this is all weirder than I thought it could be, okay? I thought nightfangs were the craziest thing I’d ever have to deal with…” she met Zaiyensa’s eyes, then quickly looked away. “Okay, yeah, I’m insecure. You’re like, all gorgeous and powerful and everything, and you’re out running around all over the world with him, alone and stuff.”
“Would you like to see the first thing he did with the first spell I taught him?” the Dragon asked. Not waiting for an answer, she pushed the memory of Devon’s fire spells into Kim’s mind.
Devon loves Kim 4 eva.
Kim grinned at seeing that huge banner being written across the sky in flaming letters. “Okay,” she said after a few moments reflection. “I feel better now.”
“Zaiyensa,” Devon called. She and Kim moved to join them at Kelli’s bedside. “They said she has some kind curse on her,” Devon explained. “Her body is all cold, like she’s dead already. And she stay inside one… Lifish?”
“Lifishi’un,” Sorvir nodded. “I passed control of the dream to her before Ercianodhon forced us out.”
“Where is Mrs. Ingram, anyway?” Derek asked.
“She is sleeping in the room next door,” Dufangen said. “She is safe, but I believe the stress of her experiences has overwhelmed her.”
Devon looked at Zaiyensa. “Can I save her without you guys going nuts on me?”
Zaiyensa frowned in annoyance, then looked at Dufangen. “We will not commit to anything. But all of you must leave Devon and I alone to discuss what to do about the Queen. Now.” She pointed at the door. “When we are finished, I will summon you.”
“Immediately, Mistress,” Dufangen bowed, as did Sorvir. Together, they quickly grabbed Kim to leave. To her credit, the human did not protest overly much. When they closed the door behind them, Zaiyensa enclosed the entire room with a sanctuary spell that would prevent anyone from entering or scrying.
“Why all the secrecy?” Devon asked.
She turned to face him, hands on her hips. “It is unseemly for mortals to witness Dragons as ignorant and powerless as you.”
“Oh.”
“I am not insulting you. But there is an expected reverence that exists between immortals and mortals. It is diminished when they witness a Dragon needing instruction, or bowing to anyone.”
Devon sudd
enly recalled Zaiyensa’s irritation when she pulled him up from bowing to Yennis. “Sorry,” Devon shrugged, “but I gotta help Kelli. I no care how goofy I sound.”
Zaiyensa sighed disapprovingly, but sat next him on the bed and felt Kelli’s face with her palm. “She is dying.”
“What? We have to heal her-!” Devon stopped as Zaiyensa raised her hand for silence, her other hand still pressed to Kelli’s cheek.
“She is trying to negotiate with Ercianodhon for her father’s life. He is captive at Gedaschen.”
“Where is that?”
“The Goblin King’s castle, at the edge of the Faery Realm far to the south. Oh, this is interesting…” she said as her eyes looked left and right as if listening to something. “Kelli has revealed to him that she is married to a Dragon. The Goblin King is definitely frightened at the thought of facing Bennett.”
“Ben no stay here, though! But wait…” Devon thought for a moment. “If I shapeshift to look like him…”
“Remember, you cannot force an end to this war, and you cannot influence Kings or Queens.”
“Why get so many stupid limits?” Devon protested. “Can’t I just put on Ben’s face and tell him ‘knock it off’?”
“Your words will have the threat of a Dragon behind them. That is the definition of influencing a King.”
“Then, let’s just heal Kelli and get her dad back, and call it quits. No need even tell the Goblin King it was us.”
“Now you are blatantly influencing the outcome of the war.”
Devon threw his head back and stood, growling with anger. “Why you guys gotta make this so hard?”
“Why do you only see solutions that require you to break the law?” she retorted.
Devon stopped and considered that. “So you saying… think outside the box?”
“Krin Ahgl is notorious for exploiting loopholes in his own self-interest. Can you not show the same cleverness to help your friend?”
“But Uncle Krin knows what the laws are.”
