by Frank Morin
One was red. It rolled across the landscape like shimmering tides from an invisible ocean. Those waves flowed through the elements and connected them to him through his affinity senses. That connection allowed him to tap that power.
But the second set of waves was green. It had higher crests, packed tighter together, driven by a stronger and faster current. They flowed over the landscape beside the the red waves, but didn’t seem to quite touch. It was as if he was peering through two different windows at the same time and each showed a slightly distorted view.
To Connor’s new sight, it seemed the elements standing before him donned billowing robes of intermingled red and green power. The different colored magic swirled around each other, and where they touched, they sparked and hissed. The elemental figures grimaced, as if in pain.
Connor had never imagined the elements might feel pain. He reached for them, but that swirling, sparkling mixture of red and green power covered their hands too. For a second, he felt a jolt of jarring energy, then his grip slipped through theirs, not quite gaining purchase. It was like trying to swim through the frothing, bubbling Upper Wick, finding nothing but insubstantial bubbles, unable to support his weight.
Connor struggled to understand what he was sensing, confused and afraid. He’d ascended to gain access to greater power, but his affinities felt unstable, on the point of breaking.
Harley was going to kill him.
He tried again, grabbing hold of their hands with all his strength. The connection jolted him like a blast from the Varvakin lightning spears as red and green waves of power smashed into his mind with churning discord. The two conflicting waves interfered with each other, shaking his connection and making it blurry, as if he were trying to study the stars by reflection off a choppy loch.
He couldn’t maintain the connection. Air yanked her hand away and fled. Earth scowled, then sank out of sight. Fire erupted into sparks that cascaded in every direction. Water hesitated for a second, her expression pained, before she broke the connection and dived into the river without a ripple.
Connor felt completely alone, void. His thoughts faded to black, and the mighty flames that had been holding him aloft vanished, like candles snuffed out by a single breath. He plummeted toward the earth, unable to move, unable to feel any of his affinities, unable to rescue himself. The ground rushed up and all he could think about was how stupid it would be to die like that, the moment after he touched such unrivaled power.
He should have figured out how to handle those strange waves. Kilian had warned him of great dangers in ascending. If only he’d explained more.
That was at least twice Kilian withheld information he should have shared. Connor had expected to live long enough to see that number rise a lot higher. He felt a bitter sense of disappointment about that as the ground rushed up to splatter him.
Tresta caught him.
Her body sculpted like stone, she snatched him out of the air, spinning him to transition some of his momentum and cushioning the fall. The two of them spun so many times that Connor retched, spraying his last meal a really impressive distance.
Tresta placed him on the ground and shivered. Her body shifted back to normal, and lamacal appeared at the base of her throat. She leaned close and spoke in her Eystri voice.
“I cannot believing I had to getting Tresta’s help to be saving you. No one here has ever seeing her. Hopefully they won’t asking too many questions, or I might not being able to ever returning.”
Connor tried to thank her, but his mouth wasn’t working. Nothing was. His muscles seemed frozen and as unresponsive as the elements. He lay prone, so weak it was a wonder his body didn’t just implode.
Healing warmth flooded through him, helping ease his exhaustion and pushing back the welcome blackness of sleep right when it was looking so tempting. Now that he could feel his muscles again, they started to complain. Loudly.
“Ow,” he whispered.
“I’m impressed you survived,” she said in a noticeable Grandurian accent as she scanned him for injuries. “You’re remarkably whole, but everything feels thin, as if you were burning from the inside, but without actually charring the flesh. It’ll take some time and probably lots of food to restore what you lost.”
As his mind cleared, he realized she was healing him. Hope helped burn away his lingering exhaustion. “Aifric?”
She shook her head. “Possible brain trauma. Will have to monitor carefully.”
Her voice wasn’t Aifric’s, but he asked, “Then how are you healing me?”
She flashed a warm smile, but it seemed cockier than Aifric’s. I’m Isabell. We haven’t met yet.”
“Oh. Nice to meet you,” he managed, trying to hide his bitter disappointment. It seemed somehow wrong that Student Eighteen might have invented another healer. Her voice was strong, but lacked the compassionate warmth of Aifric’s. Knowing that Isabell could step in and help instead seemed to cheapen Aifric’s death somehow.
At some level, he knew that was stupid, but he couldn’t make himself not feel it.
“I told you he wasn’t ready to meet her,” she said in her Student Eighteen voice.
“I had no choice,” she responded as Isabell.
“Don’t telling him about your crimes,” Eystri added.
Again her voice fell to an inaudible whisper as her lips moved rapidly in another inner conference. Connor lacked the willpower to eavesdrop again. He should worry for her health, but he just couldn’t focus on anything other than trying to stay awake.
“Help me up,” he said weakly, interrupting her argument just as Hamish and Wolfram rushed over. Briet and the high command were all watching from their tower, and Gisela was nearby, scribbling furious notes on a little notebook exactly like one of Jean’s.
“Did it work?” Hamish asked, dropping to his knees beside Connor.
“I think so. Maybe.” He glanced at his hand where he’d held the marble sculpture. All that remained were stone flakes. He’d consumed the entire thing.
“Did you learn anything?” Wolfram asked. He glanced back toward Harley, who was marching north toward the army, as if planning to crush every single one of them with her giant earthen hands.
“Give me a second. I crashed, just like after the first threshold.”
“You were weakly for a couple days after that,” Eystri reminded him.
“I don’t have time for that today. Give me a little obsidian.”
She produced a small pouch and he shoved fingers inside and absorbed a little. He really needed to start carrying some with him, now that the threat of Dougal attacking his mind wasn’t so immediate.
The obsidian rippled up his arm to his heart and mind, and Verena’s clear laughter sounded in his thoughts. He smiled, suddenly feeling more revived than Isabell’s sandstone could ever manage. His thoughts accelerated and new ideas flooded his mind.
He needed to focus on Harley, tease out a plan to stop her. His primary affinities still seemed to work, but when he attempted to tap his elemental tertiaries again, he again he felt the confusing split of affinity power in his mind. He frowned, confused and immensely annoyed. He wanted more power, not weird power.
When he focused on the elements, he again saw them standing in his mind, wearing those coats of mixed, clashing power sources. When he tried to touch them, again the two frequencies interfered with each other, severing his connection.
He sensed that if he could tap both of them together, somehow smooth out the interference, he could tap enough power to challenge even the queen, but he didn’t know how to do it. The red and green waves bucked and crashed against each other, like snarling dogs battling for dominance, but neither gaining an advantage. All they managed to do was prevent any useful connection. Even his connection with obsidian began to flicker.
He forced himself to face the fact that his tertiary affinities were somehow unstable. Not dying was still the priority, but how could he face Harley without his tertiary affinities?
As he tapped obsidian deeper, that affinity too faded away. It didn’t seem as affected by the conflicting waves of power, but neither was it immune. Would his other affinities also abandon him? The thought terrified him and made it really hard to think about anything else.
“What in the Tallan’s twisted memory is going on?” he growled.
“What is it?” Hamish asked, while Eystri hovered nearby, twisting her hands together nervously.
“There’s something wrong with my affinities.”
“You broke them?” Hamish gasped.
“No. There’s just something different. I don’t understand.”
Eystri wrung her hands tighter, looking terrified. “I knew it was a badly idea. Kilian said not to, but you had to disobeying again. This is most terrible.”
“Calm down. It’s not all bad.” He wasn’t sure yet how it wasn’t, but refused to accept that he might be powerless.
He tested his footing by trying to take a step. He wobbled a bit, but managed to not collapse. He felt as weak as a kitten, but decided he could be a fierce kitten. Harley was barely a quarter mile away and the main army had wisely turned and fled. Soldiers poured through town, not even pretending they weren’t panicking.
The high command tower settled to the ground and the entire group rushed over. They looked desperate.
He didn’t have the strength to withstand their barrage of questions. He tried sandstone and felt a surge of relief when he connected with it. Healing power thundered into him, more powerful than he’d ever felt before.
Connor rocked back and would have fallen if not for the supporting hands of Hamish and Wolfram. Healing blasted aside his pains and weakness and for the moment restored his sense of health.
“Wow! Sandstone is a lot stronger,” he laughed.
“Will that help?” Wolfram asked.
“It’s helping me now.”
Hamish handed him a cookie. “Good. Eat this.”
Connor shoved it into his mouth as the senior command all rushed up, breathless and panicked. The lord of Raufarhofn was a thickset Althin who wore his light brown hair long and braided. He carried a thick-bladed ax and walked like a warrior instead of a pampered lordling. Connor immediately liked him.
Briet spoke for them. “What happened? Can you fight? Do you have any ideas?”
“I’m working on it,” he said around the cookie.
The lord of Raufarhofn muttered to one of the generals, “I expected something a bits more impressively.”
“Says the guy who didn’t even bring me any milk,” Connor said.
The fellow chuckled, but then glanced back at his city and his expression fell. “Please helping our city. What can we doing?”
Connor still didn’t have an answer, but he couldn’t bear to say that. So he looked out at Harley, who was nearly level with their position, marching toward the main gates and the fleeing army.
She made a waving gesture toward the town with one hand, an evil smile spreading on her huge stone skull. A wave of what looked like brown sand materialized in front of her and swept toward the city.
“What is that?” Hamish asked, snapping down his visor to activate his long-vision goggles.
Connor tried to tap quartzite, but couldn’t even get a glimmer out of it. Suppressing a curse of frustration he asked, “What does it look like?”
“Like sand, actually.” Hamish glanced at him and shrugged. “Have you ever seen something like that?”
“No.” Everyone else looked equally confused.
Five seconds later the strange billowing cloud of sand struck a small military outpost next to the gate where merchants registered their loads and paid the local tax. The sand enveloped the building and it started to melt.
The walls crumbled, wood and bricks cascading down and disintegrating even as they fell. In seconds the entire structure was reduced to a pile of sand. An invisible wind swept it all up into the air, adding to the cloud already billowing out to the next building.
Great. A whole new level of destruction, right when Connor’s own strength was weakened. Kilian had said something about an opposite, destructive power of sandstone. That must be what he was seeing.
“Do you know what she is doing?” Briet asked.
“Something bad.”
Connor realized then that he could feel it, like a sandstorm in his mind. It was growing and spreading as Harley sauntered toward town, punching a swath of destruction through the city ahead of her. He was already tapping sandstone internally, and as he focused on her sandstorm cloud, it glowed softly to his sight.
He’d ascended the second threshold. Maybe he could now wield the sandstorm?
“Do something!” the lord of Raufarhofn cried.
Connor ignored him, raised one hand, and focused on the power of sandstone, willing it out, beyond himself. It took a few seconds to connect with sandstone externally instead of internally. The internal healing connection was so ingrained, but watching three shops melt under the growing sandstorm helped him focus.
Then he felt it, and the sandstorm cloud glowed bright gold in his sight. Connor threw out his affinity senses and tried to grab the sandstorm, to halt its progress or deflect it back against Harley.
The second he connected with it, the new hope that he could actually do something to stop Harley shattered. She held iron sway over the sandstorm. His affinity senses slid off without finding purchase, deflected with frustrating ease. Trying to stop that sandstorm was like throwing daisies in front of an avalanche. Harley’s control felt as complete as when she walked the earth.
Harley paused and turned her huge stone head in his direction. She waved and her voice boomed loudly. “I’m impressed you’re active so soon after the ascension, but sandstorm is mine.”
“She’s going to destroy everything,” the lord of Raufarhofn wailed.
The sandstorm gathered speed, churning toward the center of town, chasing after the fleeing soldiers. Connor followed its eventual path and realized it would roll right over the Tabnit soldiers and their strange tube weapons.
Wolfram had recognized the danger, and was already dispatching a Wingrunner to warn the soldiers to flee, but they’d have to leave their marvelous weapons behind.
Connor despaired. They needed those weapons. They needed something, or Harley was going to casually destroy everything. It was so infuriating! He’d just ascended. After the first threshold, he’d seized new powers and destroyed an elfonnel. Shouldn’t he be able to do something amazing now too?
He still couldn’t establish a solid connection with his tertiary affinities. Sandstone responded better than ever, so maybe his primaries and secondaries still worked, except for maybe obsidian, but what could he do with those?
He needed Kilian, or Evander. Or both.
Then, as a huge inn near the center of town crumbled and dust billowed out, momentarily obscuring Harley and turning the scene a bit surreal, Connor gasped.
He turned to the others. “I’ve got an idea.”
46
Sometimes Imaginary Friends Are Better Than Real Ones
“Quick, man. Do it!” Briet cried and the others eagerly echoed her.
“I’ll try to distract her again, hurt her maybe. Tell those Tabnit soldiers to hold their ground and send runners to the Althin trebuchet team. On my mark, hit her with anything you have left.”
Mattias glared. “You overstep your authority, Connor. You don’t command these armies.”
Gisela cried, “Oh, shutting up. If Connor can doing this, we should listening.”
Hamish added, “Crazy battlefield tactics are sort of his thing.”
Briet exchanged glances with her generals then said, “We agree to obey your commands. Just tell us what you need.”
That was more like it. Connor grinned as he tried to form his crazy ideas into a workable plan. He wished he had a moment to simply enjoy the moment. He’d officially taken command of the Arishat League armies. Of course, if he didn’t do something fast,
he’d be the commander who got to see Althing fall.
So Connor pulled out a piece of flint-like chert and tapped it. Immediately his skin prickled with cold drafts from everyone standing close around him. Fear, worry, and near-panic on the part of the lord of Raufarhofn poured off of them.
When he’d used chert in the past, he’d heard almost-whispers from the people around him, hints at their emotional states. Now as he scanned the group, their actual thoughts sounded loud and clear.
Loudest was the lord of Raufarhofn. “Not the warehouses! The last cutting is still in there.”
Hamish was thinking, “I hope Connor actually has a plan. He hasn’t eaten nearly enough cookies for ideal inspiration triggering, but sometimes I worry he doesn’t really understand the power of sugar.”
Briet was staring at Connor intently, but he read absolutely nothing from her. Her eyes flickered to the chert and he read understanding there. Did she know a trick for shielding her thoughts? He needed to ask Student Eighteen about that.
Eystri was carrying on a rapid-fire conversation in her mind, and Connor picked out a dozen voices all clamoring together. The individual words came too fast to understand.
Then Student Eighteen’s voice sounded loud and clear. Connor, it’s considered rude to eavesdrop on your teacher’s mind.
Sorry. He changed focus.
Gisela was writing in her notebook, her thoughts orderly and excited. “Blood of the Tallan tapped chert. A startled look on his face. Does he really have any idea what he’s doing, or is it a symptom of the affinity?”
He almost protested, but realized that would give away the fact that he was eavesdropping on her mind.
Wolfram and the military men were busy calculating losses, logistics, the best ways to get their forces away from Harley, how many soldiers might be called up to confront her before she reached Dagmanson, and if they were really willing to sacrifice thousands of lives to save the city.
That reminded Connor of his real purpose, and he again focused on Harley. She’d progressed three streets into the city, leaving a wide path of destruction around her. In that twelve-foot tall earthen battle suit she was easy to spot.
