by Billy Wong
Rose nodded. "That would be a good idea. Do you have anyone in mind?"
"I have some friends from my college who I think are trustworthy. Not sure they'd all be interested though, and you guys would still have to approve them of course." He smiled. "And this way, you'll be able to keep being warriors and going on adventures now and then."
"It's not like I would've let work here keep me from going out if I really needed to. But it would be nice for us three not to have to do everything."
Finn shrugged. "Guess it's not too bad an idea. I mean, I don't need a break but if you guys are tired..."
"We're getting dangerously close to this becoming a magic school instead of just a center for magical study," Derrick said humorously. "If we do become a full out school at some point, who's going to be the head teacher?"
"You are, of course!" Rose and Finn said at once.
#
Many hours of study later, Finn's patience for staring at old books had outlasted even Derrick's, and the scholar decided to take a walk up the tower. He found Rose sitting on the roof, seemingly lost in thought. When he walked closer to her, she said without looking up, "Has Finn seemed... different to you recently?"
He sat next to his friend. "He seems really into studying the magic books, if that's what you mean... You recognized me by my footsteps, didn't you?"
She smiled. "Yeah, I did. Don't be too impressed, anyone who pays attention could tell the difference. Anyway, Finn doesn't spend much time with me lately, outside the library at least. It's kind of weird."
Derrick sensed the uneasiness in her voice and wondered at it. "You don't think he's having an affair, do you?"
Rose looked wide-eyed at him, then burst out laughing. "Of course he isn't having an affair! Plus, you have to be married to have an affair—I think you meant cheating, but still, I don't think he is. He'd have to, you know, leave the library to do that."
"He'll get over it," Derrick figured. "It's like when I first got into books and couldn't pull myself away from them. But I learned to balance my life a little better, eventually."
"By going on adventures with epic warriors and fighting in wars?"
He smiled at that. "I meant more socially... but I guess those too. Rose, you got hurt badly before, when you were with Finn. Are you really okay now?"
She seemed amused by the question. "It already seems like a long time ago. I'm alive. I got some scars, but it doesn't matter."
"I'm still shocked the Sevrian army ran away when they still had so much manpower and resources. Maybe you beat Joghra up so bad he had no fight left in him."
"I don't know, he's a devious one. I thought at first it was a trick to catch the Kayland army off guard, but nothing happened. I still don't believe he's done with us, though. I wonder what his plans are..." She stopped, and looking at her troubled face Derrick feared to imagine the violence yet to come. Then Rose asked, "What do your parents think of you being here, anyway? Running away from college and all?"
He hadn't seen his parents since he rediscovered magic with his friends, and so really didn't know the answer. "I suppose they're probably proud of me being part of starting this center."
"You don't know?"
"They tell me they are in their letters, but I haven't seen them for a long time."
She frowned, sadness in her eyes. "You should go visit them whenever you have time. They must miss you, and we don't always have as long as we'd like to think."
He understood, knowing of her father's death. He'd met Rick himself, and been saddened by the news. "I'll do that, Rose." He just hoped they would really accept his new life, since "modern pioneer of magic" hardly constituted a stable career.
#
The female giant laughed, going to her knees and kissing the earth where Kaylander tents had recently stood. "Smooth ground!" she cried. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"Stop being overdramatic, Fiona," Joghra said. "The barricade is still right there behind us." There just hadn't been enough soldiers manning it to put up any real resistance. But as he walked over the land which had been so hotly contested before, a smile came to his face too. Beside him stood the two strongest and most terrifying warriors of Coblan, and behind him their combined armies stretched farther than the eye could see. And ahead, well there lay his kingdom.
They took their first steps into Kayland—no, Joghrai.
#
Days later, a messenger arrived in Gustrone to tell of the remaining Kayland forces in the Brushknoll being crushed. The Sevrians had returned, and also added a large number of Coblan soldiers to their ranks. Now the vast army made its way through central Kayland, little resistance between them and their goal of Gustrone. King Benedict ordered all the land's armies to converge at the capital, but Rose doubted every local lord would obey, and even those who wanted to might not make it in time.
An attempt to call upon the nation's other great champions also went poorly. Rose's friend Alicia was out of the country. Count Brandon of Resnick was nowhere to be found at all. At least the king's brother Victor did manage to drag himself north with a decently sized force to the city. No matter what they would still be outnumbered, and Gustrone resigned itself to a siege, hoping its strong walls would hold against the monstrous war engines the Sevrians were known to be capable of making.
Upon hearing the news, Finn had a choice comment for Derrick. "So the capital is the best place to go if you want to stay safe, right?"
"I didn't know the Sevrians were going to try and take over Kayland," Derrick said with a sigh. "I thought they just wanted whatever was in the Brushknoll."
Rose frowned. "We took the useful stuff they wanted from the Brushknoll. I think when Joghra, with all his ambition, saw that his original goal was out of reach, he decided to make himself a new one. Which, I might add, could ironically lead him to his old one—our magic library. But what I'd like to know is how he got all those Coblanders to join him."
"Maybe he just made them join him," Derrick suggested.
Finn didn't think so. "The reports I've heard don't make it sound like the Coblanders were enslaved, considering they appear pretty enthusiastic. But it would have taken someone with major influence in Coblan to get them all together this fast."
Rose nodded grimly. "That gives me a bad feeling. Fiona isn't that inspiring."
"What are we going to do?" Derrick wondered.
She clenched a fist. "Fight, of course. Really, there's nowhere to run now where we'll be safe. And me and Finn aren't the type to give up a home without a struggle."
"No we're not," Finn agreed. "So we're going up against Coblan and Sevria again, just like not so old times, and both at once at that? This should be interesting. Try to stay by my side this time, hmm Rose? You always get hurt so bad without me around, and I hate seeing you suffer."
"I'll try."
The city frantically prepared for war, and Rose, Finn, and Derrick were no exceptions. Finn practiced using his offensive spells, Rose finished fixing her armor and trained to defend against Joghra's tricks, and Derrick... practiced the use of his crossbow. By the time the great iron gates of the city closed, the friends thought themselves at least moderately well prepared for the coming clash. They were wrong.
#
The immense force that came into view outside Gustrone put all imaginings of it to shame, an endless carpet of men which flowed with serpentine menace. An enormous covered contraption was being pulled along by a herd's worth of oxen, and everyone exchanged nervous guesses at what it might be. The great mass gathered before the gates and stopped. A lone masked figure stalked out from amongst the ranks, eliciting strong cheers from the Coblan soldiers, and screamed a demand for King Benedict to show himself. Watching, Rose's group found the tall man disturbingly familiar in dress and bearing. After a few minutes of pacing back and forth by the black-armored warrior, the king finally appeared on the high stone walls. A broad-shouldered man approaching his sixties, Benedict addressed his impatient enemy.
&n
bsp; "What do you want? Who are you and why do you lead your people against me?"
"Who am I?" the black-armored man replied. "Better to ask, who are you? You are the one who attempted to destroy my nation, tear down the government I made, and allow my land to be again thrown into chaos. And I see your agents who were personally responsible on your walls, and I can tell you I will enjoy killing them." By now, Rose and her friends knew who spoke, though it was impossible. Finally, the dark warrior confirmed it by opening his huge helmet. Prince Wilner looked directly into Rose's eyes, then Finn's, and grinned. "Fall has come, and with it the fall of Kayland."
King Benedict recovered his composure after a moment of mute shock, and defied the resurrected prince. "This city will never fall. For all your men, you will never break down its gate or its walls!"
Wilner only grinned. Another, even larger figure joined him, a young giantess carrying a familiar halberd. "Are all our old friends here?" Rose mused.
Fiona whispered something to her prince, and Wilner ordered, "Unveil the Spear of Coblan!"
From his seat on a wheeled platform in the middle of the Sevrian portion of the army, Joghra remarked dryly, "I thought we agreed to call it the Spear of Death?"
A horde of men pulled on the enormous tarp over the unknown contraption then, and the covering fell away. A battering ram of mythic proportions, made from one of the largest of northern Coblan's great trees set on low wheels of iron, stood revealed. The titanic stake was sharpened to a dull point, and its sides full of long metal spikes jammed into the strong wood. A hundred men took up positions at these makeshift handles, and a hundred more by their sides with great shields to shield them from arrows.
"My idea," Fiona proudly announced.
All of Gustrone's defenders gaped. This was bad. Arrows flew like rain from the walls to pelt the ram's operators. But only a handful fell, the rest well defended by the massive tower shields, and more men quickly ran to replace the fallen. Finn launched a gout of flame at the trunk, but the enemy had accounted well for his abilities and the wet wood did not catch fire. The walls of Gustrone shook as the great wooden spike crashed against its gates, already putting a deep dent in the center. Now Finn hit the ram with a big lightning bolt, hoping to split the shaft. Yet the great trunk was far too thick for that, and with a burn mark in its center rolled back for another strike. Again Kaylander arrows fell and saw minimal effect. Finn tried a different tactic, dropping a wide fireball which felled five pushers and five shields. But again men ran to replace them and the ram came forward undeterred, slamming once again into the gates.
This time the great crossbar bent. The invaders could see into the city, and their excitement grew as they pulled back for a final strike. Now the desperate defenders gave their attack on the ram their all, arrows raining down so fast that at moments they blocked out the sight of its operators. Finn unleashed a spell which almost dropped him with the exertion, making the ground under the men at the front left of the ram explode out from under them. A dozen and two warriors went flying, and the progress of the rest on that side slowed. But though it came on lopsidedly as if wounded, still it came, and the third blow of the huge spike tore the gates of Gustrone from their hinges.
From then on chaos reigned while the armies fought through the city, the desperate defenders using their home ground advantage to try and hold on against the countless invaders. In the first half hour of fighting, Rose must have killed over a hundred men. She knew Finn took a similar toll on the enemy, using his spells and weapons in better conjunction than he ever had before. But they knew they'd made only the slightest dent in the enemy forces and drove themselves impossibly to fight even harder. No wound or fatigue registered in their minds as they fought together. Even Derrick garnered a number of kills to make warriors of legend jealous, if only because the lovers protected him while he shot his crossbow until all bolts were gone, and then retrieved another from a fallen enemy, and later another, and another, until he lost track of how many quivers' worth of ammunition he expended. Still, for all the enemies they killed every corner they turned revealed a hundred more, and soon even Rose began to feel fatigue creep into her tireless arms.
#
The hunched giant stalked calmly towards the terrified squad of Kayland soldiers, a huge sword in one hand and great ball and chain in the other. He was bald with crooked teeth, and had short legs compared to his long yet massively muscled torso and arms. But his most noticeable physical feature remained his greenish-brown skin. "Grum crush northerns," he rumbled.
"H-he's bigger than Fiona..." a soldier whispered.
"Bigger than Joghra," another put in.
"Is he bigger than Egbert Laros?" a third wondered.
"His coloration is not that of men," someone else said. "They say some of the monstrous races can breed with humans, and such abominations are the result..."
Howard stepped forward from among his comrades, leveling his sword at the behemoth. "Will you all stop pissing yourselves? I've fought plenty of 'tall' things and being tall doesn't make you tough. You picked the wrong group to try and scare, because I'm here and I know no fear. I won't falter, I won't run, and my sword shines with the light of just gods. Prepare to die, giant."
He sprinted at Grum, who started to raise his sword. Howard leaped into the air and chopped down. Grum's enraged sneer froze as his face split apart, and he sank dead to his knees.
"Howard! Howard! Howard!" his squadmates cheered. "Howard Giantkiller! Howard the Uncoward!"
His face brightened at the last one. "Howard the Uncoward!" he repeated, running around with his sword raised in triumph.
Hidden behind Grum's kneeling bulk, his spear buried in the giant's kidney a split second before his great blade would have intercepted Howard, Justin smiled. It didn't matter if his brother got to be the hero, as long as both of them lived.
#
Victor locked weapons with the huge girl before the royal castle, his greatsword straining against her even larger halberd. Himself not a small man, he couldn't believe how much bigger she was than him. His retainers rushed, attempting to strike at the giantess while she seemed vulnerable. She shoved him back, sliced one man's throat with the point of her halberd, and brought the axehead back around to behead another. He charged in again. She blocked his overhead chop, kicked him away, and swung her weapon in a huge arc to gut two more foes and cave in the ribs of a third. Another of his men—the bravest men of his province!—screamed and fled.
"What is your name, monster?" he demanded as they matched blades again.
"Why? Fiona. You are shockingly ignorant."
"No, I thought Coblan might have more than one giantess."
A retainer managed to stab Fiona in the hip. She grabbed him by the neck and snapped it with a twist, but the distraction allowed Victor to slash open her shoulder. She retaliated by slicing him all the way down his arm. Another retainer cut her thigh. She cleaved his skull down to the neck bones. Victor tried to run her through. She sidestepped and her elbow nearly broke his spine.
He staggered away, turned and faced her. All his retainers had been slain or fled. She stood before him waiting calmly, halberd butt planted against the floor. "I will beat you, monster," he said.
Watching from a short distance away, Prince Wilner chuckled. "Maybe you could." He indicated the other, male giant wider than Fiona beside him. "But could you beat the three of us? Your fight is an exercise in futility. I am merely amusing myself watching my new Captain of the Guard humiliate a royal of Kayland. You should probably step aside now while you still have the chance."
"You mean to kill my brothers! I will not allow it!"
"Do you really have a choice in the matter? Consider the odds of victory and make your decision."
Victor looked at Fiona. She grinned. He glanced towards the black giant—Joghra. He shifted his mighty warhammer a bit. He turned to Wilner. The prince looked meaningful at his axes. Victor stepped aside.
"Coward," Fiona said with
a sneer while they passed him, leaning down to put her face in his. He should have done something. He should've punched the teeth down that arrogant youth's throat. But he didn't.
As the trio walked unchallenged into the castle, Victor heard Joghra ask Prince Wilner something. "But I thought you sought vengeance against Kayland's royal bloodline? Why didn't you kill him?"
"Don't you know that was Prince Victor, great hero and warrior prince of Kayland? Killing him would have been bland compared to that. I imagine he'll wish he was dead after realizing how he just humiliated himself. I might kill him later. But for now, knowing how he suffers is glorious in itself."
Victor couldn't even think. He dropped his sword and stumbled off, knowing he had condemned his oldest brother to death.
#
Prince Wilner screamed for his prey while he fought through the castle, laughing at the pathetic bodyguards who dared stand in his way. Dismissing his opponents like children as he stormed the halls, he finally came into the throne room. King Benedict stared terrified at him, broadsword held in trembling hands.
"Looks like the feud between our lines is about to be settled," Wilner commented with little emotion. The fact of this conflict, he found, didn't hold the same excitement as the anticipation of it.
Wilner was twenty years younger, half a head taller, had been fighting in real warfare for his entire life (unlike Benedict who'd only had sword training), wore armor which made Benedict's look like no more than a padded tunic, and wielded two axes with reach and weight on the king's sword. Still, Benedict rushed to meet Wilner, his family at stake. To his credit, he blocked one of the twin axes that swept down. The other buried itself in his chest, and as he fell dying he called out his eldest son Aaron's name.
Wilner watched his opponent's grown sons run out to avenge their father and sighed. How could such foolishness reside in the hearts of royalty? With little more than a thought, he dispatched the two younger men, making rivers of blood run across the elegant tiles. He stepped into the room from which they'd emerged and found the queen standing between him and her sons' wives and children, a knife in hand.
