by P. S. Power
He looked at her and seemed mildly annoyed.
"Yes? Is there a problem in the kitchen again? I really wish we had some more common girls for that. You noble brats are making a hash of it, aren't you?" He sounded snooty, but it was unique hearing a giant wishing for more commoners. Worth putting up with the bit of annoyance behind the words even.
"Sorry, I just came from the surface. Countess Baker? If you missed it, that's where County Morris use to be. I need to use your secured Austran communications link? I have important news." She waited for the fight to take place, for him to demand she prove herself, or something like that, but he just looked at her for a bit.
"Oh. Well, as long as you aren't the one burning my supper every single night, I can deal. Over there. Do you need help using them, Countess?" The last bit even came out sounding relatively polite.
"Nope, I can manage, I think. I've done it before at least."
It took nearly ten minutes to get someone useful though, since Brown was off doing something actually important, not waiting for her to message him. The Prime Minister came to the device though, which was kind of him. They hadn't even met before.
"I got word earlier, from our man on the inside of the Others, that an attack was planned for Austra in twelve days. Using mechanical devices and dragons. Possibly other things too. I didn't get a lot more than that, but there are some two hundred dragons possibly incoming. Expect missiles and explosives. Probably lasers too. We had all of that when they attacked Callwood a few days ago at least. A lot fewer in number though."
There was a soft sound, like an exhalation. It was frustrated though, not angry.
"Well, thank you for the information, Countess. I'm not certain I know what a dragon is however? Some kind of attack craft?"
She blinked, because it was probably going to sound insane, wasn't it.
"Um... Oh, I know, have you seen the dimensional play my brother Tor made? Where he was fighting against the Larval?"
"I have, yes." The voice sounded polite so far at least.
"Great! The dragons are, well, made like that. They're solid seeming and real... Dragons. As in the mythical beasts? They're larger than houses though, call it half the size of one of your apartment complexes there? They're hard to destroy too, being made of virtual particles. Don't let the look fool you, they're dangerous. Controlled remotely by human agents. Clones in this case. We have some weapons that will help you with that. I can get you some. We don't know where they'll be coming in. I... Are you willing to send troops up into space? We can drop them in on them from orbit. We have some units from Noram to do that, but you have that air defense system there. We'll have to work around that."
"Wait, so real dragons?"
"Well, they look like that. Think robots? That might be closer." She was proud to have remembered the term, but didn't know if the man would know it at all. He seemed to however.
"Drones... All right. Thank you for the warning, and whatever aid you can provide. I'll inform the Revered One."
"Ah, thank you! Please tell him that Tiera says hello? I'll send those weapons to him. I probably will have to come in and show you how to use them. I'm... So busy. Call it four days?"
"I'll try to clear my schedule. See you then, miss. I mean Countess Baker."
"See you then, Prime Minister Foley."
Then the connection broke and Tiera reset the device for the next use. It was important not to let its power supply run down. They had a limited amount of that, and had to be recharged in that land. It was inefficient, but she wasn't going to change it that night. As it was she needed to work out when they were coming back around the planet over Noram.
The Captain looked at his schedule and then tapped the paper it was on twice.
"We should be back around to the Western edge in fifteen minutes. Do you have a transport?"
She shook her head.
"I was just going to jump. It's night, but that shouldn't be too bad, If I can find a point to orient on at all. I have to get back to school, hence the attractive attire. Lairdgren."
"Oh? Good school I hear. Now, are you really going to try a nighttime space drop? That's insane you know. No one does that. Even the Elite forces don't do that. I haven't done it at all. We have ships for that."
She let her nose wrinkle cutely and smiled at the man. He had a mustache, but looked rugged enough to be attractive, without seeming brutal.
"May I have your name?" She'd been pretty rude, she understood, in not asking. She was probably supposed to know already.
"Jose Peterson. Captain of the Midlist, and Countier Second, Peterson."
That was who he looked like. His brother, the Count. She nearly pointed that out, but then decided it would be rude. She hated it when people brought up her family after all. As if she didn't count in her own right?
Instead she bowed, which wasn't the Space Fleet custom, meaning some of the others on board snickered at her a bit, but all of them, regardless of what land they hailed from, tried to hide it. The Captain stood and bowed back, not going as low as she did. They were on his ship after all and in space. There he would have probably bowed only slightly deeper for King Richard.
"We should get together sometime? If we ever have a chance?"
The man was easily pushing thirty, but he nodded, seeming to mean it.
"That would be most welcome, Countess Baker. Provided you survive your trip back to Earth, I mean?"
She winked, making it playful. "Hey, I've done this before. Twice. Once in the dark. I'll be fine. Let's stay in touch? We know people in common, I believe?"
They chatted about that for a while, and it turned out they really did. His fleet Admiral, her boyfriend Gerent, and Smythe of Westend, though Jose only knew him in passing, he assured her. He was a good man though. Everyone knew that.
When it was almost time for Noram to come around she walked to the correct wall and got it ready for her to leave. Someone would have to fix it when she left, but no one mentioned it that she heard. This time, going alone, even in the dark, the trip was a lot more boring. She fell toward the Earth, but slowed herself so that she was only traveling about a thousand miles per hour for most of it, then, about ten thousand feet up she killed her speed almost totally. She was in the right region, she thought, but it was cloudy and she had to go lower to see the land, which nearly didn't work.
That meant she had to search for the school, and until daylight she didn't have any luck at all. It was a bit embarrassing, because she got to the practice area late. On the good side, everyone else was standing around, waiting for her, and it was clear they were all just getting there, too. Late, since it was a lot closer to seven than not, she thought.
"Sorry everyone. I went into space. Now, let's start with some running? We'll do that every day from now on." She had Guide, Sam, Ali and Sheri there. No one else came at all. For all she knew they weren't even asked. She didn't needle Sheri on that though.
They didn't run far. Only two very slow laps around the school.
Then she lined them all up at the pells, as Kolb moved in, looking at them all closely. He didn't comment really, just letting her set things up. When Karen finally got there, about an hour later, she seemed refreshed, but didn't look the same way as the day before, wearing her new face. That got Kolb to question her, but Tiera just waved first, before he said more than "Who-"
"It's Karen. This is how she really looks now. She's also throwing off pheromones, so be careful that way. Nothing as intense as Julie White, but keep it in mind everyone." Then she had to explain what that really meant. The four hogging the pells just nodded, as if it made sense.
No one spoke however.
After a while Sheri stopped and set her stick down. It was on purpose, but a mistake. Tiera was on her in a flash and smacked her gently on the behind with her own weapon, which was a real wooden practice sword.
Karen yelled at her!
"Pick it up! It's a trap! She'll start really beating you if you let your
weapons drop!"
She smacked Sheri a second time, and then a third, getting harder each time. On the fourth her shield kicked in, but the girl didn't wait for Tiera to turn it off, just scrambling for the stick, which she rather clumsily tried to defend herself with. It was adorably cute.
When Sam lost his, ten minutes later, it was Kolb that did the beating and it was a lot harder. So much so that the boy ended up running away in fright. Karen caught him by the front gate and made him go back, but the weapons instructor merely bowed to the boy.
"Not horrible. Don't ever drop your weapon, no matter how much pain you feel, but running away is a good plan for a small person. Though I suppose you boys are about to go into growth spurts?"
Guide nodded at him, as if they were both people, not a commoner and a nobleman.
"Yes. That's the plan, sir."
After a bit he bobbed his head a bit and looked over at Karen.
"All right. Meet here each morning. Earlier than this, since you aren't getting out of classes or normal building work. Sir Derring, if you'd see to their training? Tiera, you're with me. No shields. Remy!" That got a wave to the being who was walking over anyway. "You get to take the loser. No shields, staff weapons."
Then the man proceeded to beat her in a way that he never had before. For the first time Tiera really understood that she wasn't a fighter at all, or even learning to be one. In that moment she was no more than a pell.
Something for a very angry man to beat into submission.
It was less than fun.
Chapter six
For some reason she didn't understand, it was very clear that Kolb not only understood that there were some new Ancients around, but that he blamed Tiera for it happening. Worse, he knew she hadn't done it, and didn't seem to care about that at all.
The day before Remy had played with her, she realized, functionally killing her three times. Kolb... Slaughtered her. Over and again. She had to leave her healing amulet on the whole time and even that wasn't truly enough. She realized that, if he kept going much longer, she was going to die, for real. In the course of half an hour she had most of the major bones in her body broken, half her face removed, literally, and many organs destroyed.
It was so harsh that people didn't even pretend to practice after a while. They just stood and stared. She was known to be decently tough and really strong, but Sir Kolbrin was, right in front of them, killing her. He wasn't even really taking any damage from it either.
Finally she let her shield come on, not able to hold it off any longer. That just made him mad. They'd worked together, as a group, to learn to fight with shields in place. It had never really done a lot. Some joint locks worked, on occasion, but that was about it, she thought. Now though she realized that while she and Judy Kerry had been flopping around like fish, trying to hold their Instructor down a bit had looked all right, it had just been playing around.
Her shield stopped working, and she lost consciousness, not even seeing what had been done. When she woke up, a half bucket of water was busily being dumped on her head.
Kolb held it, but looked ready to continue then. He wasn't thankfully, which gave her body a little time to try and catch up. She was actually losing weight, she thought, the healing was taking so much from her, energy wise. She was suddenly starving, on a level that she'd rarely felt, even with all the growth.
As she sat there, gasping for air still, he spoke to everyone, loudly.
"You need to get this through your heads now. We're in a war for the survival of humanity. This isn't some tale where you'll win just because you're the hero. Things won't just accidently turn out right in the end. Each of you needs to be ready, and you simply aren't... yet. Yes, we have magic and that is making all the difference. Without that, all of us, except possibly Remy here, would already be long dead. These new students have the right idea and can see the use of learning to fight, but that needs to be a signal to us all. We can no longer live like children, playing our school games. From this point on, we have to live and breathe war, or we will all simply perish." He looked at the new kids who'd mainly been standing around, probably wondering if quitting would work still and waved at them.
"You builders need to become far better. Work smarter and do more, with less energy. You... homemaking girl..." He seemed nearly at a loss when he looked at Sheri, but bowed, probably to buy himself time to think of something. He held it so long that everyone else finally did the same thing, as if honoring her. When he stood he smiled a bit. "I can't help but notice that you're the only one from your section to be here. That's truly impressive."
After a bit he waved to Remy, who took a nice solid fifteen minute turn killing her too. It was really close when she finally flew away, trying to live for real.
Kolb laughed.
"Fine, this time. From now on we're doing that once a week. Get with Count Lairdgren and arrange for implanted devices for everyone. That, or do it yourself. In fact, builders, work that out with the man. Don't count on Tiera for it. You have three weeks."
Tiera shook her head, which hurt in so many places she had to stop. Her words sounded like mush still, but it had to be said. It only took three tries though.
"Ten days. Sooner is better, an attack is coming." She didn't give specifics, but Kolb waved to her, as if saying that it was true. It probably didn't matter to him though, did it? Not as long as the work was done.
She wanted nothing more than to sleep then. It was pervasive and her eyes tried to close on their own, over and over again. It wasn't her plan for the day, but she left then, even though it was very early in the day, and went to bed. If Kolb wanted to have a problem with her missing the remainder of class, he could yell at her later for it. Later. One way or the other, she was sleeping, even as her body cried out for food. She found a few mouthfuls of dried fruit and meat left and devoured them as she laid on her student's bed, her feet almost dangling off the end.
Then, with a bit of jerky still in her teeth, she went out. The world went black, and as far as she could tell, nothing changed around her at all, until nine hours later, when Sheri showed up with a basket of food. Tiera didn't even talk. She just sat up and ate, not caring if she didn't seem sane. When that was done she drank all the water in the room and laid back down.
She woke in the night, with Karen snoring in her own bed, and managed to work for two hours on her new project, but it was all she could do. Her body made her sleep again after that. In the morning, late, for her, Karen already gone for the day, she forced herself up, and went searching for food. It was still breakfast time, so she hit the dining room and made a real pig of herself, not even brushing her teeth first. No one stared at her though, but she still felt mainly dead.
She kept that up for the rest of the day, not going to classes at all, just eating and sleeping. She did keep her build going, working whenever she had a chance to. Sheri and Ali came each day, bringing more food. It wasn't until the fourth day of this cycle that they really got a chance to talk to her though.
It was Ali that spoke, talking to her like she thought something was horribly wrong.
"Tiera? I... We know that Baron Kolbrin was mean to you, but you need to go to classes. Even if you drop his, you should leave the room more. And bathe. You're starting to get a bit ripe." It was worried sounding, but also a joke. After a fashion. It was true too.
Except for one thing.
She wasn't depressed. Just tired.
"That isn't it." She yawned, but managed to stand up anyway. "Oh, sorry. Kolb almost killed me and Remy did too. I mean, as in I really almost died. I was pushed right to that edge, even healing the whole time. It's just a thing, but it's taking my body a bit to recover, that's all. I'm not trying to dodge out on my work, I just couldn't help it. I do feel better now, I think. I'll go and get a shower. I promise." She made her voice go cute, like a little girl, but it didn't work that well, since it was deeper now than it used to be. Not manly, which given her size had to have been something Tor h
ad added in for her.
Standing she grabbed her gear and went to the bathing area, with the other two right behind her, as if they weren't sure she hadn't been lying to them. It took a while to get really clean, but she did feel a lot better, the water and rest helping a lot. So, even though it was pretty late, she managed to get to her meditation class in time.
That went remarkably well. She'd figured that her eyes would keep closing on their own, but she managed it all right. Doris did wave her over at the end, even as everyone else walked out, looking at her with the corner of their eyes, as if she didn't get it.
The white haired and old looking woman regarded her head on, but without judgment. A good part of that had to do with the deep trance she lived in all the time. It was what Tiera tried to do, but it really wasn't the same thing yet.
"I noticed you missed several classes. Is everything well?" The tone was so soft and peaceful that Tiera redoubled her efforts to stay as deeply as possible, speaking or not.
"Kolb and Remy Two nearly killed me, in practice. It took several days of sleep to recover. I feel better now and will request that next time they only do a quarter of the damage, so that I can make all my classes. I'll also attempt to do a better job holding a deep state as I live, to help make up the time I missed. I'd give my off days to you in repayment for that time, but I can't. I have to work." It was all true, even if she did sound very flat.
Lifeless.
Doris just nodded a few times.
"That would be wise. I'll see you then, in a few days."
There was a seated half bow, and a gestured toward the door. It was a slow and gentle thing that the white lady made as if it were perfectly natural, and not an affectation at all. For her it might be. She was thousands of years old, so had some practice in.
Tiera went back to her room and did more work on her build, which seemed to be growing pretty well, as far as she could tell. It felt almost like it was ready, which was fast work. Perhaps it hadn't been as hard as she thought it would? That, or the way she'd done it was just that efficient.
