How much energy? E=mc^2, baby. The flow rate wasn’t especially high, but my little amulet would provide a steady supply of energy for centuries before it ate itself.
Figuring out how to lock the spell down as a permanent enchantment took another hour or so, and I eventually had to punt and use my instinctive ability to control my own magic to handle turning it on and off as needed. The meta-magic aspect of my mana element was enough of a grounding that I was sure I could work out a proper way of embedding on/off controls in an enchantment, but I’d probably need an afternoon of trial and effort to get there. No time for that now, obviously.
Avilla came out with a set of clothes for me while I was working, and waited with a faint smile while I awkwardly dressed myself. No zippers or Velcro, of course, just lots of buttons in odd places. But that was fine. I just counted myself lucky she was offering pants and a shirt instead of a toga or kilt or something.
Then I got to the shoes, and frowned as a though occurred to me.
“You just happened to have shoes in my size lying around?”
“Of course not, Daniel. I adjusted them. I may not be much use in a fight, but I’m good at domestic magic. Did I get the size right?”
I tried them on, and wriggled my toes. “Yeah, looks like it. That’s pretty slick.”
She smiled prettily at the compliment, and I had to remind myself she was taken. And probably a lesbian, unless her joke earlier was meant as an offer. Damn, but she was cute.
She went back inside to pack, and I shook my head. Hadn’t I had enough woman troubles for one week? Focus on not dying.
It took the witches hours to get ready to leave, but the reasons why went a long way towards reassuring me that they were just a couple of young women with unusual abilities rather than some kind of monster in disguise. They washed up and changed and fixed their hair first, and spent a good while fussing over each other and debating what they should wear. When they finally got down to packing they spent forever agonizing over what to take and what to leave, and it was pretty obvious to me that neither of them had ever done something like this before.
I didn’t want to leave until dawn anyway, so I didn’t worry about it. The time they spent dithering was just more time I could spend getting ready.
Once my amulet was finished I spent some time pacing and thinking, while I got used to the feel of drawing energy from it. My personal supply of magic worked more like physical fatigue than the mana bar in a computer game, and I got the feeling I could damage myself if I tried to use too much magic to quickly. The fight with the troll had been pushing my limits, and it might take a day or two to completely recover from that.
But my artificial power source was more like a machine. It could feed me energy forever, and drawing on it let me work magic without tiring myself. There was still some mental fatigue involved in channeling the energy, but I could go for hours before that started to get to me. So what was the next most important problem we were going to face that I could fix with magic?
Well, that was obvious.
Enchanting a cloak to shed warmth was far less complicated than my mana exploit, but my understanding of fire magic was a lot weaker. It took quite a bit of experimentation to get the right intensity to make the garment comfortably warm without being too hot, and by then the first light of dawn was starting to creep in through the hole in the wall.
The girls came trooping down the stairs at that point with a rather ambitious-looking pile of belongings. A bulging pack for each of them, of an odd design that didn’t look terribly comfortable to my eye. A short pole with several sacks hung from it, which I guessed they meant to carry between them. Another, larger pack that Avilla set down in front of me.
“Can you check the weight on that?” She asked reasonably. “I’m trying to save as many of granny’s implements as I can, but I wasn’t sure how much you can carry.”
I picked it up, and mentally revised my estimate of the girl’s strength. It had to weigh sixty pounds, and she’d carried it over in one hand with no obvious effort. Avilla was a bit more solidly built than Cerise, but she was more statuesque than amazonian. There was no way she had enough muscle to pull that off naturally, so it had to be some kind of magic.
I hefted the pack for a moment, and slung it on my back. Ouch.
“That’s going to get heavy after a few miles of road. I take it you were hoping to load me up with more?”
She bit her lip, and nodded uncertainly. I sighed.
“Look, Avilla, I know it’s hard to leave things behind. But we can’t weigh ourselves down too much or it’ll get us killed. For all we know we could run into an army of trolls a mile down the road. How fast do you think you and Cerise are going to be able to run carrying all that?”
I nodded at the pile they’d accumulated on the kitchen table.
“Um... not very fast?” She looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Daniel. It’s just, I’m a hearth witch. I’m almost powerless once I step past my threshold, and if I can’t even cook and sew properly what use am I?”
Well, that was a fair point. But I was trying to encourage her here, not make her even more worried.
“You’ll have a home again someday, Avilla. But we have to keep you in one piece until we find a place to rebuild. Tell you what. Make a pile of the things you can’t bear to lose that are too heavy to carry easily, and I’ll seal them up in a stone vault under the house. That way the goblins won’t find them, and we can come back for them someday.
Her face lit up like she’d just gotten a stay of execution. “Really? You mean it? Thank you, Daniel!”
She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. Then she spun and ran back into the kitchen, babbling excitedly to Cerise about reorganizing the bags. I just stood there stunned.
Wow, that girl could kiss. Her lips tasted of honey and cinnamon, and that wasn’t poetic license. It must be some kind of magic, but whatever it was it was damned effective. The warmth of her lips on mine lingered for long moments, and the memory of her generous bust pressed against my chest kept replaying itself over and over in my mind’s eye.
Cerise gave me an amused look over her girlfriend’s shoulder. I shrugged, and smiled back. What was I going to do, pretend it hadn’t happened? Besides, I was pretty sure it didn’t mean anything. Avilla was just a touchy-feely sort of person.
The sun was fully up when we finally set out, but not by much. It was shaping up to be a clear day, with a cold wind blowing out of the north and the temperature hovering somewhere just below freezing. Not the best weather for travel, and all of us were a bit beat up from the fight. But I was determined to put some miles behind us before the goblins tried again. With any luck they’d give up on us once we left the area.
“We’ll see what state the village is in, and then decide how hard we need to push,” I told the girls. “It would be nice to stop early and get some rest, but the important thing is making sure we move far enough to break contact. If we have to we can find a spot to hole up and recover tomorrow, but that won’t work if the goblins are tracking us.”
Cerise eyed me speculatively. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
Sure, kid. Twenty years of computer games, mostly RPGs but some RTS and first-person shooters for variety. Give me a controller and I’ll be right at home. Only this was real life, not a game.
But she didn’t need to hear that. She had to be terrified enough already. I certainly was, and I had a lot more magic to work with than she seemed to.
I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could manage. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve spent the last few years doing academic work, and I’m having to adapt to some big changes in the power set I’ve got access to, but I can manage.”
She and Avilla exchanged a look. “That explains it. You seemed a little out of shape for a guy with the skills Lady Hecate mentioned.”
“Oh? What did she say about me, anyway? I never had a chance to ask her why she picked me.”
Cerise
gave me a look like I’d just asked why water was wet. “Who else would she pick? I mean, she said her divinations didn’t get all the details, but how many guys can say they’ve slain... oh, what was that list again? A few dozen dragons, a bunch of demon lords, the King of Liches, the Riftlords, the Blade Queen of the Devouring Swarm - not that I know what half of that even means, but it sure sounds impressive. I’ve never heard of a hero who made such a career out of traveling to distant worlds to save them.”
I stopped in mid-stride, staring off into the distance. Good god. She thought my video game exploits were real?
No. Hecate had known perfectly well I didn’t have magical powers. She must have had a reason for talking me up to Cerise, then.
“Daniel? Is everything alright?” Avilla asked in concern.
“Yeah. Sure. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“The Goddess has that effect on people,” Cerise smirked. “So, think you can stop Ragnarok?”
“Ahem. Let’s not get carried away there, Cerise. Judging from last night the monsters here are pretty tough, and I don’t have a boatload of mystic artifacts or an army of heroes at my back. Which reminds me, if I’m going to pull off this ‘traveling wizard’ act there are a few things I need to know...”
That diverted them from my supposed accomplishments for a bit, at least. Cerise chatted amiably about her land’s society and local customs, filling in the details I’d need for my charade with a skill that spoke of formal training. I tried to focus on memorizing her lessons, and building up a plausible backstory.
But inside I was sweating bullets. Talk about having high expectations to meet!
Several hours passed, and we made decent progress as the sun rose higher. Then around mid-morning it was Avilla’s turn to suddenly stop for no apparent reason.
Cerise immediately froze, and began scanning the trees around us. We were on a little game trail with a thicket on one side and a dense stand of trees on the other, and about a million places for enemies to hide all around us.
“Avilla?” Cerise asked. “What is it, sweetie?”
“The woods,” she replied, her eyes still out of focus. “It’s the goblin shamans. They’re doing something to the spirit of the wood. I can feel the blood of their sacrifices seeping through the trees...” She trailed off, and stood there swaying for a moment. Then she snapped back to herself.
“We have to go,” she said urgently. “Now! They’re waking the trees.”
Cerise went wide-eyed, and turned to plunge on down the trail briskly. We both moved to follow. But it was already too late.
Twenty yards down the trail Cerise ducked under a low-hanging branch, and it whipped down to flail at her. She stumbled back, clutching her head, and a bush beside the path grabbed her.
“Cerise!” Avilla’s butcher knife was back in her hand, but I doubted that would get the job done.
“Stand back,” I told her, and formed a three-foot force blade extending from my fingertip. I hacked the bush apart with a few quick strokes, and Cerise tore herself free. But by then Avilla was struggling with a clump of vines that dropped from the tree over her head.
I cut her free too, and we ran.
From there every step was a battle. The branches flailed at us, leaving us battered and bruised before we’d gone half a mile. Vines and bushes grabbed at us, and I found myself constantly hacking away with the force blade. Roots shifted underfoot, rising up to trip us whenever we were distracted by another assailant.
Then the path vanished entirely, and we realized the trees themselves were moving to block our flight. I pulled the girls close and shredded everything around us in a whirlwind of spinning blades, and looked up to take a bearing on the sun.
“That way!” I pointed. An ancient-looking oak stood directly in our path.
“How are we going to get through?” Cerise panted.
“Like this,” I said grimly. I pulled deep on my magic, and the ground beneath the oak moved to shove it aside. It fell with a tremendous crash of breaking wood, and the rest of the trees seemed to draw back. But Cerise looked skeptical.
“You can’t possibly do that to every tree that gets in our way,” she objected.
“Watch me,” I growled, and stalked forward. “Stay behind me, and stick close.”
I hacked and smashed a path straight through the forest, leaving a trail wide enough to protect my charges from the hostile plant life. My amulet replenished my mana almost as fast as I was using it, and for a few minutes I thought I’d beaten the trap. It might be a little slow, and I’d need a rest break at some point, but we could get through like this.
Then a flight of goblin arrows came hissing out of the woods behind us. The girls were both hit, Avilla in a leg and Cerise in the side, and several arrows planted themselves in our packs.
“Damn it!”
I threw a storm of force blades into the undergrowth behind us, and a high-pitched scream said I’d hit something. But I couldn’t see the little nuisances at any distance, not with all this cover to hide behind.
“Run!” Avilla cried urgently, darting past me. “Only half a mile to the edge!”
I followed her, throwing out more blades to fend off a renewed attack from the trees. “You won’t make it!” I argued. “Not with those wounds.”
“Cerise has demonic vitality,” Avilla informed me.
“Avilla’s body is spell-wrought,” Cerise countered. “One arrow won’t stop us, but ten will. Move! We can outrun goblins.”
I ran.
It was a mad, nightmare race. With no time to clear a path we had to weave our way between the trees, fending off lashing branches and grasping underbrush again. More goblins were moving to intercept us, and every time we thought we’d lost them another flight of arrows would pelt us from a new direction.
They were smaller projectiles than a human bow would launch, with a lot less force behind them, and that was the only thing that saved us. Sometimes I got a force wall up in time, but more often than not another arrow would lodge itself in one of our number. I took one in the arm and another in the chest, and had to waste precious seconds ripping the second one free and stopping the bleeding. The witches gasped out protective charms as they ran, but even so they were starting to look like pincushions. Poor Avilla even had one sticking out of her breast, which had to hurt like hell.
Finally we smashed through yet another thicket, and found ourselves at the edge of a wide cleared space. I threw up a barrier behind us as soon as the lack of cover registered on my weary mind, and we all stumbled forward. Two heartbeats later another volley of arrows rattled off my shield.
There was a cluster of ruins that might once have been a village a few hundred yards from the edge of the forest. The buildings had been burned, recently enough that thin trails of smoke still rose here and there. There were moving figures between us and the ruins, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought we’d been herded into another band of monsters.
Then I realized they were human.
There was a line of carts and wagons drawn up in an open field next to the ruins, with several groups of people gathered around them. Several were already shouting and pointing in our direction. Most were civilians, a crowd of men and women in ragged clothes clutching bundles of belongings. But a good percentage of them were soldiers, dressed in chain mail and bearing a varied assortment of spears, swords and bows.
“Keep running,” I gasped out, and stumbled to a stop. They girls took my advice, making a beeline for the hoped-for safety of the guards while I turned to face the way we’d come.
They might just take us all in out of the goodness of their hearts, but I wasn’t counting on it. Soldiers weren’t going to turn away a pair of cute young girls, but I’d better make an impression.
A half-dozen goblins burst from the trees and stopped, looking around wildly for a second as they took in the scene. I threw a hail of force blades downrange with a dramatic gesture and completely unnecessary incantation. Two of
the little monsters went down, one decapitated and the other cut clean in half, and the others retreated into the trees. A few arrows rained down around me, several bouncing off my shield.
I exchanged fire with the creatures for a few seconds, but that didn’t seem to be getting us anywhere. A couple of the soldiers snapped off shots of their own, and a squad of them began cautiously approaching me with their shields raised. Then the lumbering form of a troll emerged from the woods, and they decided maybe it would be wiser to watch from a distance.
An especially wrinkly goblin wearing a feathered headdress and about a dozen amulets sat on its shoulder, waving a length of carved bone at me menacingly.
“You no stop Gug!” The creature shouted proudly. “Spirits of earth protect! Gug, smash puny human!”
More goblins appeared along the edge of the woods, capering and cheering.
I cracked my knuckles, and conjured a ball of flame in one hand. “Come and get it, ugly.”
The troll grinned, exposing far too many teeth, and charged me.
I stood watching as nonchalantly as I could manage, trying desperately to pretend this was just another raid. I could see the bubble of protective magic around the troll, and my previous tactics weren’t going to work. A gaggle of invisible spirits stood ready to oppose any earth spells I attempted, and the troll was warded against fire. A second ward confused me for a moment, until I realized it was a protection against physical attacks. It wasn’t terribly strong, but it would turn light blows aside and blunt the force of heavy ones a bit. All in all it was a pretty impressive setup.
Too bad for the goblin he was up against me. When the troll was maybe twenty feet away I conjured an invisible force wall right in front of him, with a thin spike of force two feet long projecting out of it at chest level. The troll’s own momentum impaled it on the spike a heartbeat later.
The shaman’s eyes went wide as I strolled up to the confused troll, still maintaining the wall and spike.
Fimbulwinter (Daniel Black) Page 3
