by Chris Fox
55
Out of Time
Nara cautiously stepped through the doorway into the ship’s dim interior. The first thing she noticed was the stench. She’d thought it smelled bad outside the ship, but the interior was a whole other level. Without her spellarmor she’d probably have vomited, and even with it she badly wanted to take a bath.
She sketched a fire sigil, and a flame bloomed above her head. It illuminated the corridor, a little at least. The walls were coated in a slick substance. She bent closer, noting the faint magical signature. Was this stuff…alive?
“K-kept the faith,” a voice muttered from down the corridor.
Nara hurried forward, drifting through the air so as not to touch the ground. That wasn’t just an aversion to the blood. Being invisible was pointless if she left a trail of footprints anyone could follow.
Nara stopped above the figure, puzzled by what she saw. Or didn’t see. The figure was enshrouded in shadow. She lay in a puddle of dark blood, which slowly congealed around her legs.
She took a deep breath and considered her options. She could attempt to burn the blood away, but risked hurting the woman. A nullification spell, perhaps? Nara sketched several sigils, then flung the spell into the blood.
The blood lunged suddenly, bubbling up around the magic. The spell disappeared instantly, absorbed if it had never been. The blood responded by boiling outward, and now covered the woman’s legs entirely.
“Wait a sec,” Nara realized aloud. She glanced up at Ikadra. “You were created for this moment. I’m betting you’ve got a solution.”
Ikadra’s sapphire flashed like a six-year-old who needed to pee. “Oh, that’s right. You need permission to speak. Ikadra, I give you permission to speak however and whenever you like, until told otherwise.” Voria would hate that, but it irked Nara that Ikadra wasn’t allowed to talk whenever he wanted.
That kind of servitude reminded her uncomfortably of Frit. Ikadra might not be a person, but he was as alive as any of them, and deserved the same respect. Even if he did like poop jokes.
“You’re even hotter when you’re freeing me,” Ikadra burst out as his sapphire flashed. “Oh, thank Neith. I can speak! That Krox had no sense of humor. Like, at all.”
“I’d love to catch up, but I get the sense we’re short on time,” Nara pressed. She pointed at the blood-covered woman. “We need to help her, then we need to get to the bridge as quickly as possible.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Ikadra’s emerald pulsed thoughtfully. “You have void flame right?”
“Yes.” Nara could cast void flame, though she rarely used it. Frit was the true master there.
“That woman is an Outrider,” Ikadra explained happily. “She has innate magical resistance. I can further enhance her resistance. She might not like it, but if you hit her with a burst of void flame it should boil away that icky crap.”
“Worth a shot, I guess. Ward her,” Nara ordered.
A warm white glow built around Ikadra’s tip. That glow was answered by the Outrider. Her skin slowly became luminescent. “Okay, that’s the best I can do. If this goes wrong…totally not my fault.”
“What do you mean, not your fault? It’s your idea,” Nara shot back. She took a deep breath. She must be stressed if she was arguing with a staff. She raised a hand, and sketched a delicate set of fire and void sigils.
A hot rush of purple flame burst from her hand. It billowed outward and covered the Outrider, obscuring her from view. Her body went rigid and she screamed. Nara’s heart wrenched, but she kept the flow of void flame up. The flames ate greedily at the blood. As before, it tried to absorb the spell. But this time the fire won, slowly burning away the blood.
Nara kept it up for several more seconds. She forced herself to ignore the woman’s frantic cries, and only ended the spell when she was positive the blood had been burned away. So had the woman’s clothing. She huddled there naked, her skin pink and scalded.
She stared wildly up at Nara, a few patches of black still on her cheek and forehead. It streaked what might be blond hair, though that was difficult to tell in this lighting. She was pretty—though nothing on Ree’s level, thankfully.
“Can you stand up?” Nara asked. She knew this woman couldn’t see her face under the armor, and that would make trusting her hard. But there was no way she was removing her helmet, not in this place. There was still plenty of blood on the walls, and she’d watched enough holovids to expect some blood zombies to come lunging out of the darkness at some point.
“Yes,” the Outrider muttered. She rose shakily to her feet. “I haven’t felt this…whole in a while. Did he reach the door in time? Is that why you are here?”
Nara didn’t need Neith’s gifts to connect the dots. This woman led Aran to the door, and for her to do that, a god had somehow arranged the possibility.
“Yes, he reached the door. Come on.” She offered the woman her free hand, and the woman accepted it gratefully. “Do you have a name?”
“Rhea,” she muttered.
“Ikadra, can you lead us to the bridge?” Nara asked. She lifted off into the air and clutched Rhea tightly to her side. Thankfully the ceiling was high enough they could hover off the ground without brushing either it or the floor.
“Sure. Hey, do you want me to deal with this stuff?” Ikadra pulsed.
“If you can, sure.” Nara flew slowly down the corridor, since it seemed the only way to go.
“Can you feed me a little void and some fire?” Ikadra asked excitedly.
“Sure.” Nara mixed void and fire and fed the energy into the staff.
“Pew. Pew. Pewpewpewpewpew.” Ikadra’s sapphire pulsed in time with the words as he flung balls of void fire all up and down the corridor.
A new and even more terrible stanch billowed out around them, and Rhea promptly vomited all over Nara’s armor. Eww.
Ikadra kept flinging spells as they flew down the corridor, long after he should have run out of magic. “How are you still casting?”
“One of my many fabulous talents is serving as an amplifier,” Ikadra explained. “Hold on a sec. Pew. Pewpewpew. Anyway, if you cast a spell into me, I can replicate it using my own internal reserves. Basically, you can cast any spells you want me be able to use into me, and then I can do this. Pewpew.”
The blood burned away ahead of them, leaving relatively clean walls in their wake as they soared through the vessel. Nara had no idea when Rhea had passed out, but her head lolled against her spellarmor, and her hair dangled low enough to almost brush the ground as they flew.
“We’re almost there.” Ikadra blasted away the blood in a final corridor, then they arrived in a long, narrow control room. Four spell matrices identical to those on the Talon faced a wall-sized scry-screen. Every bit of it was coated in blood.
“Ikadra?” Nara asked.
“Pewpewpewpew.” Balls of void flame shot all over the battle bridge, and when the volley ceased, most of the blood had been scorched away.
“Now, how do we get back to our own time?” Nara gently set the unconscious Outrider against the far wall. Her breathing was deep and even, though she was probably cold. Nara reached into her void pocket and withdrew her blanket. She covered the Outrider, and tucked in the edges.
“Well, it looks like we have about eighteen seconds to make the transition, and the spell will take a minimum of six to cast,” Ikadra pulsed happily.
Nara sprinted for the closest matrix and dove inside. She tapped frantically at the void sigil on the silver ring, then the gold, and finally the bronze. The vessel shuddered to life as she linked to it. A hundred senses overwhelmed her, from the state of the spelldrive, to each individual spellcannon. The experience was overwhelming, and she fought vertigo as she tried to make sense of it all.
“Ikadra?” she asked as calmly as she could. “What is the spell sequence?”
“Void, void, fire, void, water, void, air.”
Nara quickly tapped the sequence. Her hands shook as more
and more magical energy was ripped from her dwindling reserves. Her finger hovered over the final sigil. What if Aran hadn’t made it back aboard?
“We’re out of time,” Ikadra screeched. “Go, go, go!”
Nara stabbed the final sigil, and prayed.
56
Best Spell Ever
Voria circled the mountain peak as the last three Krox ships moved to flank them. That included the one that had broken off from Davidson, which was slower than the others and trailing smoke from the grievous wounds the marines had inflicted.
But despite their heroics, this was the end. In every possibility, this was as far as she’d made it. If she focused on the ship coming over the peak, then the ones on her flanks gutted them.
If she focused on a flank she lasted a little longer, but the ship coming over the top softened them up while the final ships got into position to fire. There was simply no solution. She knew, because she had tried them all.
The closest they came to survival was running, so that was what she did. Voria dropped low, no more than fifty meters above the deck. She poured a torrent of void and fire into the spelldrive and the Hunter reluctantly accelerated.
The Krox carrier cresting the mountain loosed another torrent of missiles. “Bord, another ward. Quickly. They’ve launched more…what did you call them, Pickus?”
“Nukes, sir. Or more properly nuclear missiles,” the tech mage explained. He stood behind Crewes, ready to relieve him if needed.
Bord’s hand shook as he tapped the final life sigil, and he grunted when the ship tore more magical energy from his chest. He sank to a knee, and barely caught himself against the stabilizing ring.
The ship lurched suddenly, flinging Voria into the side of the matrix. Her wrist bent painfully as she caught herself against the stabilizing ring.
“Sir, we took significant damage from that blast,” Crewes said. He tapped a fire sigil and the scry-screen adjusted to show the lower decks. Much of the cargo bay had been cooked, and parts were still ablaze. “I don’t think we’re going to survive another hit, even with one of Bord’s wards.”
“Not sure I can do another one,” Bord said weakly. He rose, trembling, and leaned against the stabilizing ring.
Kezia moved to stand outside it, and rested a hand on Bord’s. “You did good. We’d be dead if you hadn’t joost saved us.”
“Well done, Specialist.” Voria was doubly glad she’d ordered Davidson to secure his position. If they’d been down there in the hold, every last surviving marine would have radiation sickness. Bord could treat the symptoms for a few people, but not for an entire battalion. And anti-radiation meds only did so much.
“Sir,” Crewes called. The scry-screen shifted back to show the other two Krox carriers pulling into view. The closest one hadn’t fired again, though she knew it would in a few more seconds. It always did. In every possibility.
“It has been a privilege and an honor serving with all of you.” Voria kept her tone even, but she couldn’t stop the tears. “We’ve done more, survived longer, than anyone could have ever expected of us. I am immensely proud of all we accomplished.”
The sergeant was the first to understand the import of her words. His shoulder’s squared. “It’s okay, sir. You did more than anyone could have, or should have asked. I’m proud to serve with you, Major.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking. “I did try, Sergeant. But I cannot find a way out of this.”
A cloud of nukes launched from the first ship. A heartbeat later, answering clouds came from both other vessels. How ironic that the Krox were killing them with a weapon developed on Ternus. A magical war, settled by technological means.
“Sir, maybe we can make it to the Talon,” Kezia called desperately. She seized Bord, and her voice fell to a whisper. “There has to be something we can do.”
The space between the Hunter and the missiles rippled and twisted. Voria’s brain fought to make sense of what she was seeing. Two separate realities stretched before her. In one, the missiles streaked toward them, impacting. In the other, something materialized in that space.
The second reality overpowered the first, and a truly massive vessel appeared. The ship was long and menacing, like the barrel of a weapon designed by the gods themselves. Blue circuitry glinted from the hull, but only in small patches. Most of the vessel was covered in a thick, viscous fluid. At first, anyway.
All three clouds of Ternus missiles slammed into the vessel.
“Bord, give me anything you can,” Voria called with the kind of confidence she knew he needed to hear. “Kezia is depending on you. We all are.”
Bord disengaged from the drifter and his face set in a mask of grim determination. He raised a trembling hand and tapped the first sigil. Energy rolled off him, but weakly this time. He tapped the next sigil, and grunted as more white energy rolled into the hull. Finally, he raised that trembling hand and tapped the third sigil.
A wall of white sigils burst around the ship once more. It obscured the scry-screen, cutting them off from the distant explosion. Voria tapped fire and shifted the scry-screen to a bird’s-eye view. A wave of brilliant death burst over the gargantuan ship. Most of that flame was shunted away, stopped by a shimmering blue shield only a few meters from the hull.
The ship—the First Spellship, she was sure of it—served as a bulwark. It broke the flow of death, and all the Hunter had to deal with was a lazy wall of nuclear flame. Bord’s ward held, and after several seconds the flames abated.
The specialist collapsed to the stabilizing ring, and Kezia helped him to lay down. She stroked his cheek. “You were amazing.” Kezia bent and kissed Bord on the forehead.
When she rose, he wore the largest, most wicked grin Voria had ever seen. “Totally worth it,” he murmured. “First. Base!” He gave a little fist pump, then laid back down.
A potent ringing began in Voria’s ears. She recognized the resonance, but it built too quickly for her to react. Void energy flowed all around her body, encasing her in its frigid embrace. The teleport completed, and she was ripped from the bridge of the Hunter.
She staggered when she arrived, lurching into a wall a meter or so from her landing point. Her hand slid in something greasy, and she tumbled onto her butt with a grunt.
“Oh, no,” Ikadra’s familiar voice shrieked. Voria winced as it drove into her brain. “She’s going to make me be quiet again.”
“Sir?” Nara’s muffled voice came from far away. She was being helped to her feet.
Voria blinked, and her attention focused on Nara. She remembered who she was…and where she was. “We’re in the middle of combat.” She looked around desperately.
There were four matrices, and in front of them, the entire wall was covered by a massive scry-screen. That screen showed the three advancing carriers, the wounded one lagging a considerable distance behind the others.
“Do we have the means of dealing with those before they can attack again?” Voria stabbed a finger at her enemy.
“Can I do it?” Ikadra begged. “Pleaaaaase. Just say the word, and I’ll take care of them. I promise.”
Nara offered her the staff, and Voria accepted it gratefully. Ikadra’s warmth was more reassuring than she’d like to admit. “All right. If you can remove those ships, then do it. I don’t care how juvenile your solution is.”
“We’ve got missiles, too.” Ikadra’s sapphire pulsed wickedly, and he laughed in time.
A trio of glowing azure balls shot from the Spellship, each streaking toward one of the Krox vessels. They didn’t come from the spellcannon, but rather from the hull of the ship itself. That raised a good many questions, but she could find answers later.
For now, Voria watched the balls of energy to see what they would do. The spells slammed into the ungainly Krox carriers…and disappeared. There was no immediate effect that she could see.
“That seems a good deal less flashy than I’d have expected,” Voria said. She glanced suspiciously at th
e staff. “What did you cast?”
“I call it so fat.” Ikadra giggled wildly. “Your starship so fat, it’s got its own area code. And heavy stuff tends to fall down.”
Voria had no idea what an area code was, and she didn’t much care. She was fixed by the Krox carriers, which were slowly plummeting from the sky. Each gained momentum as they approached the earth, and by the time they impacted, they had enough momentum to create explosions to rival those of the missiles they’d fired.
The mushroom clouds died away, and there was no sign of any carriers, just a blasted and barren field. That field was lifeless now, utterly. If anyone had lived there, and Voria believed they had, then they were gone now. Would the Wyrms even notice?
“Did we miss anything?” Aran asked from the doorway. Voria turned to see him standing with the greasy archeologist Nara had been working with. And this time he really was greasy. He looked like he’d been rolling in whatever that oil was.
“Not much,” Ikadra called back to Aran. “Only the best. Spell. Ever!”
57
Pariah to Hero
Voria rarely enjoyed parties. She hated all the posturing and the subtle manipulation. That was especially true of parties with dragons, who took all the petty games to an unenviable level.
Yet, today, she was delighted to attend.
Perhaps it was the Spellship hovering in the sky above the party. It hovered there, its imposing bulk dominating much of the skyline. The long sleek hull was positively menacing.
“That wasn’t particularly subtle,” Olyssa said as she sidled up to Voria. She offered a goblet and Voria accepted it.
“You mean the ship?” Voria smiled up at the vessel. “Too petty, do you think?”
“Not at all.” Olyssa burst into a sudden, inhuman laugh. It, and the hairless face, were reminders of her draconic nature. “I particularly like how you dropped the shadow over Aetherius’s area, but nowhere else.”
