White Mage

by Jolie Jaquinta

  Chapter 34

  Weaponry

  Bianca started from her contemplation of patterns in the Ævatar lab as Devonshire's broadcast come in on the emergency military channel.

  “Dev to all senior command: high probability of immanent attack. This is not a drill people. My son just thwarted an assassination attempt against yours truly. Magical follow-up pointed the finger at The Waterbearer as instigator. It's probably a prelude to something more direct. I'm declaring high alert.”

  Bianca cleared all her work from her desk. It could just be paranoia on Devonshire's part. She was always a bit high strung. But it might not. The timing was certainly right. This was almost the worst possible time that the gods could attack.

  Queries went up and down the channel. Alessa, as raking general, took charge. She confirmed the high alert and ordered all troops and senior command to check in. Bianca did so as she heard the sirens go off outside her building in Irontree.

  The Queen joined shortly afterwards and took command from Alessa. She confirmed all orders and further directed the mages of Irontree to set off some explosions and have the death of Devonshire reported. Bianca recognized the hand of her spymaster in those suggestions. She then called for status reports from everyone in turn.

  Bianca dutifully reported that one Ævatar was available. Not in perfect order, but in a state to be activated with twenty minutes notice. Queen Jessica acknowledged and moved on. Regardless, Bianca moved quickly to the main holding tank and began to set about work. There were a number of simple regenerations she had intended to do but had not got around to. They didn't need strategic mana, so she started them now. It wouldn't hurt if this turned out to be nothing.

  Her ears perked up when she heard her mother report that they had a test system for pulling energy from a vortex into the strategic mana reserve. It had not been verified yet but they could quickly reinforce it and hope for the best. The Queen immediately ordered Goatha and Miasma to do that and for Eadwyn to summon up a vortex.

  The line grew silent when Alessa broke in to announce worsening weather conditions in Romitu. Dramatically worsening.

  “If there was any questions about this being it,” said Jessica, after a pause. “Let them be put to rest. We are at war.” She ordered the 9th army into the field, and for the 22nd and 31st to immediately gate to Romitu to stand by.

  “Request permission for Lilly to help preparation for Ævatar activation,” said Bianca.

  “Sorry, Bianca,” replied Jesca. “I need her with the 9th. Let’s give the conventional approach the best shot first. But do all the preparation you can for activation without draining the reserve.”

  Bianca scowled and mentally tuned out. There was no hope that their army could dent the gods. At best, they would be a minor inconvenience and worst, a draw down on the reserve to resurrect them after they were slaughtered wholesale by the gods. But she was not about to argue with the Queen in the middle of all of this. That would get nowhere. Short sighted or not, Bianca had to let her do it her way, and just get ready what she could for when it came to it.

  Ævatar activation was not something that was designed to happen fast. Nor were the steps constructed to be performed out of order.  But, in the least, Bianca could call up clean checklists and do some of the completely trivial steps.

  That didn't occupy much time, though. By the time she had finished the 9th was in contact with the arriving gods. Positive sightings were given of Sky Father, Water Bearer, and Grave Keeper, as expected. A wave of casualties was reported with the first attacks; however the gods beat a quick tactical retreat. Apparently Lilly had a string of company mages erect an energy adsorption umbrella from her annihilation experiment and directed it to Devonshire who funneled it into caustic venom with a targeting pattern based on the god's souls.  There was some subdued cheering, but it was clear to all that it was merely an acknowledgment that there was a real fight going on here.

  Bianca knew it wasn't a trick that would work twice. Not unless the trick wasn't apparent. The Ævatar was a construct of immense power. Most of their efforts, so far, had been in activating it and harnessing its power in a controlled way. Their thoughts of actual use had been in casting spells. At its scale even simple magics could wreak tactical damage. However, that assumption assumed mana was in ready supply. That's not what they had.

  But in inventory storage there was a range of items recovered from the initial Ævatar lab. Massive armor and weapons to scale with the Ævatar. Apparently its original constructor had envisaged a more hand-to-hand deployment. Most of what they had found was incomplete. Making normal sized magic weapons and armor was a huge task with the old magic, let alone enormous ones. With the new magic, though, such things were much less difficult.

  Bianca's recollection dimmed when she came amongst the storage cases, standing like dusty monoliths in the corners of the lab. They had been reorganized several times over many relocations and she had forgotten how many there were. Giving up on her memory, she summoned up the pattern of a sword, attached a seeker phrase to it, and set it off hunting in the dusty rows. There were not a lot of swords in the immediate vicinity to confuse the spell, and it fairly readily led her to a group of boxes she did recognize.

  She read the labels on some and magically scanned the contents of others. There were a lot, and they were large. She was going to need room to dig through them, and even more room to put them on when in the Ævatar. She looked up and studied the ceiling. They had, generally, planned on teleporting the Ævatar from the lab to where it needed to be deployed. But another contingency was leaving through the roof. The walls and ceiling were designed to be supportive of its weight. So she cast a simple activation spell and a large aperture opened in the roof above the main holding tank. A few more and she and the boxes she had identified levitated thorough it to the roof of the lab.

  The sirens were silenced now -- the troops all mustered. She could see all perimeter towers were fully manned; her own actions drew interest from the nearest ones. The only token normality was the roar of the forge and the endless creak of the line of carts ferrying bark chips to it.

  She broke apart the boxes with more magic. They and their contents were far too large for her to manipulate by hand. So far she had only used her personal reserve. This was all simple stuff and she had not had to tap into the strategic reserve. She knew she would need the Queen's permission for that right now.

  The sword was very roughly worked and ill-suited for further magical enchantment. Fortunately they had patterns aplenty for all sorts of well refined metal. She just had to invoke one, target the sword with it, and use a transmutation phrase to align the sword more strongly like a good one. It wasn't brilliant, but it probably wouldn't shatter when used, and she could lay down more magic on top of it. It was large, but the magic didn't care about scale. Doing permanent enscorclement would be very expensive, but she reckoned that nothing needed to last more than a day, and enough energy to make it last only a day was pretty easy.

  The armor was in better shape. Clearly the original mage had come closer to using that than anything else. Assembly wasn't difficult. She would magically alter the straps when she donned it. Interestingly enough it already had some magic imbued in it. It was old magic so the pattern of it was not clear; all mixed up with the general dross of ignorance before the six books were discovered. She figured it was best to leave well enough alone.

  When she unboxed the shield she was glad to find that it was both in good condition, and also free of old magic. A rare smile crossed her face as she considered a variety of patterns. What Lilly had done on the battle field was good, but she felt she could do better. First she lay down the basics of the power adsorption substrate. She tied that not to the shield, but the pattern of the shield. She then further put in a projection mechanism that, when Will was applied, would use the pattern of the shield to create a projection of it, effectively making the shield more than just a physical block, but a magical one as well, and pot
entially to a wider radius or displaced position than it occupied physically. This meshed with the absorption so that it would adsorb energy directed at both the physical shield and its magical projection. Lastly she routed the output of the absorption through the handle to the wielder. This should be able to directly power the internal reservoirs of the Ævatar through energy directed at it.

  The only other pre-prepared weaponry was a large halberd and an odd twin pronged spear. Of the two she was more familiar with the halberd, but reluctant to spend much energy adding magic to it. She was unlikely to use it unless desperate.

  She paused after this to listen in to the battle. It seemed to be mostly maneuvering. Both sides had been playing with magically enhanced weather and it provided both physical and magical screening. So everyone was stumbling around in the dark.

  Bianca decided she had time to do something she had been formulating while repairing the existing weaponry. She created the simple pattern of iron, and textured it for temperature. She attached a simple sense and seek phrase and directed it towards the forge. Not surprisingly, it quickly registered contact. She felt it through the magic, and drew it towards herself. There was a distant cry of surprise from workers and crashing of masonry as a globule of molten iron rose into the air above the forge. As it coasted towards where Bianca stood, she slaved actuator spells to her hands, and kneaded the iron, like an immense loaf of dough. She stopped it when she felt the heat on her face. She set it to another pattern and let it take over the stretching and folding of it. Touching her own knife, she made a pattern of it and confined the shape, balance and weight distribution to that. There were several more spells to process it, but all had been well researched to produce their army's magical weaponry and all she needed to do was scale them up. Since those were mass produced, they were optimized for minimal energy and time. When the steam cleared from the super cooled elemental water quenching she released the shatter suppressing constraints. A fairly good facsimile of her knife lay on the roof before her. 

  She smiled for true and longed to handle it. This she knew how to use. Of all the weapons, she knew she would do the most damage with this. Sure, it was for close range, but if it came to that, she could give a fair accounting for herself.

  Almost on cue, an attention alarm sounded over her battle link. It was the Queen. “Bianca. We're winding down the ground operation. You're cleared to activate the Ævatar.”