by Philip Blood
“So, why bother with physical armor, can’t a mage just believe he has a gun and plug you full of holes, right through that fancy looking armor you are wearing?” I asked.
Hydan reached into his pocket and then pulled out a pistol. I recognized it; the gun was a type from earth, a Ruger 357, single action. He dropped the gate down, extracted one of the six bullets, showed it to me, and then put it back into the cylinder and closed the gate to show me it was loaded. He then reversed the gun, and handed it to me, grip first.
“Shoot me,” he said.
I frowned, “What?”
“Shoot me with the gun, I assure you it is loaded with real bullets, just like you get on Earth, and I also assure you it will not harm me in the slightest.”
I remembered shooting Stewart Hentan, back in the Temple of Karnak, the bullets hadn’t even bothered his clothing. “Oh, I bet you don’t believe in the bullets, so when they get close they change to something else, something harmless.”
Hydan shrugged, “Yes, they would do that when they got close to me. We call it subconscious reality. My subconscious won’t let anything get near me which will do me harm, even if I am asleep, or can’t see my attacker, like a sniper from distance. You can’t surprise me, so you can’t hit me with a bullet, from any distance or at any time. But, that’s not why the gun isn’t going to harm me today.”
“It isn’t?” I asked.
“Nope, go ahead, shoot.”
I aimed at his chest, then thought better of it, and aimed at his upper arm.
He noted my change of aim and smiled, “It doesn’t matter where you aim.”
I nodded, but kept the aim at his arm and then I fired the gun.
It was very anticlimactic, the hammer fell, it went click, and nothing happened.
“It’s a dud,” I exclaimed.
Hydan laughed, “They are all duds, and every bullet you ever make on Abal will be a dud. The Archimage of this planet set the rules of physics here in such a way that gunpowder, or anything which burns fast like that compound, won’t work. Nobody can change it, either, not on this Archimage’s world. In fact, this is true of all worlds, with the exception of Earth, which has no Archimage anymore; she was killed a long time ago.”
“Really, so no guns on the other Worlds?” I said.
“Actually, you can have all the guns you want, but all you can do with them is throw them at someone, or use the gun like a club, but there are far better ranged or melee weapons than a gun to make and use of it is your desire to harm someone with a club.”
Myrka nodded, “This is why I use my dagger, which works on all the Worlds. And when I coat the blade in Derkaz power it will cut through just about anything.”
“How come her knife doesn’t change when she changes other things?” I asked.
Hydan replied, “Well, first off because she doesn’t think the knife is something else, but also because it is a relic.”
“Relic? Like an old thing?”
“No, a relic is something which has been kept on a mage’s body for a long time, and they have invested a lot of power into the reality of this item. Relics tend to keep their original shape, even if a mage attempts to change them.”
“Tend to?”
He shrugged, “It depends on the amount of power invested and the amount of power the mage who is trying to change them has at their disposal.”
I looked at the ring on my left hand, “What about this ring?”
Hydan looked at it, and said, “Yes, I sense a lot of power invested, this is indeed a relic.”
I thought about all this for a few minutes and then I figured it couldn’t hurt to accept what Hydan was saying and try to change my clothing. I pictured myself in the armor which Hydan was wearing, but nothing changed.
“It isn’t working,” I said.
“That’s because you doubt. You have to know what is what, and then it will become true because it IS true.”
“Just believe that’s the way it is, and Bob’s your uncle?” I asked.
He pondered that, “You can’t make Bob your uncle using magic; it doesn’t work on changing people’s heritage.”
I snorted, and then I looked at Myrka, “What about her?”
“She will change when she knows what she is wearing,” Hydan answered.
I shook my head as if trying to clear cobwebs.
He tried to explain, “She has never been to this world, so she has no concept of what she should be wearing. Once she does, she will change. Here, I’ll give her an image, if she’s willing.”
Myrka scowled but then nodded.
Hydan concentrated and suddenly Myrka’s clothing changed to another style of light armor, though hers was molded from some hard pieces instead of scale, and she had a cloak that draped over her shoulders, with a hood, which was currently down. The cloak could cover her completely if she pulled it closed in front.
“You put that on her?” I exclaimed.
Hydan shook his head, “No, I sent an image to her mind of this type of armor, but she created it in her reality. I would have to get much closer to her to change her clothing to my reality, and even then her Power would be fighting my realities intrusion.”
“I’m getting a headache,” I said.
“If you believe that is true, you most certainly will,” he answered.
“Screw you, it’s a headache,” I answered.
“I never get headaches, because I don’t believe in them,” he replied.
I snarled, “How nice for you!” And my head started to hurt. “Wait, if you can stop from getting headaches, why can’t you keep from getting drunk! Isn’t that just another perception of your personal reality?”
Hydan looked puzzled, “Why would I want to do that? Getting drunk is the whole point of drinking!”
“You like getting hangovers?” I asked.
He held up a finger to make his point, “I get drunk, but I never get hangovers, I don’t believe in them.” Then he smiled.
“You are incorrigible!”
“That I believe,” he said with a short laugh.
“Now you know why I would like to kill him,” Myrka noted with a disdainful sniff.
I sighed, “No, but I’m warming up to the idea.”
Hydan laughed.
It was about an hour later when we came upon the carrion-strewn battleground. It was a marshy field, along the banks of a small river. The bodies were strewn on both sides and floated in the water. There were several hundred dead saerans.
Many of them were dead from traditional types of battle wounds from mundane weapons, but there were also many who were sliced in half, and burnt from what looked like intense heat like someone had used a laser on them, even though there was no such technology on Abal.
Myrka explained, “That is Derkaz power, it was used on these mundanes. They had no chance.”
There were two types of uniforms, colored purple, and blue, but they were all just dead saerans in the end. It was a sad sight to see.
Myrka was unaffected by the signs of slaughter and just clinically studied how they were killed.
Hydan was disgusted, muttering about the waste of it all.
I was just sad. I hadn’t known I was saeran until only recently, and here were my people, slaughtered. Sure, they had killed each other, but in the end, it didn’t matter, what mattered was a lot of good lives were ended, for nothing. We quickly left; the bodies would soon start to smell.
A few miles down the road Hydan suddenly stopped.
Myrka scowled, “What is it, Friare?”
“Sense it,” he said to her.
Now it was my turn to scowl, “Sense it? You mean listen, or look?”
He shook his head, “No, sense it, with your power.”
Myrka tilted her head in a mannerism I was starting to associate with her being surprised, or maybe, ‘noticing’ something.
“A battle arcane,” she stated.
Hydan nodded, “And not far ahead.”
I continued to scowl at them, and tried, well, concentrating. I got exactly nothing if you didn’t count mounting annoyance. “Is that very surprising? I thought you said there was a mage’s Civil War on this planet.”
“Yes, but there aren’t very many mages left, in all the time I was here before, I only ran into one mage battle,” Hydan explained.
“So, what, we’re lucky?” I said.
Myrka frowned, “I would not call this being lucky, perhaps you meant cursed.”
“OK, so what is the plan?” I asked.
Myrka and Hydan answered simultaneously, with Myrka saying, “Kill them.” And Hydan saying, “Go around them.”
“We’ll do neither, let’s go see what’s happening,” I said.
Hydan answered, “That might be hazardous,” and then he added, “There could be geese.”
I did a double take, not remembering that ‘geese’ was now his cue word to tell me we needed a private chat, where Myrka couldn’t hear us talk. Then I remembered.
Myrka asked suspiciously, “What are geese?”
I turned to Myrka and replied, “I think I heard some over by that bush over there!”
Myrka went into a crouch and then headed for the bush. As soon as she was out of earshot I asked, “OK, so what?”
“Nicholas,” Hydan answered, “this is a poor idea; I have not had time to even begin teaching you to use your magic. If a Derkaz blast is sent your way, or an arrow, or knife, what will you do?”
“Dodge?” I said hopefully.
He shrugged, “Or die. You sure you want to test these waters right now?”
“How about if we sneak up and just take a look?” I asked.
“Dangerous, but less so, all right,” he agreed.
Myrka came walking back looking perplexed, “I found none of these geese you spoke of, what are they?”
“Fowl creatures, you never want to meet them,” Hydan said with a shudder for Myrka’s benefit, and a wink for mine.
“I am not afraid of any foul creature!” Myrka exclaimed.
Hydan nodded, “All right, what are your orders, Nick?”
I raised an eyefin but replied, “Let’s sneak up on them, and NO unauthorized attacks, Princess,” I said to Myrka.
“I am not a princess, I am a Fourth,” she replied.
“Even so,” I answered.
“I will put a glamour around us, it will keep most mages, or other magical creatures, from sensing us, unless they get close,” Hydan explained.
I couldn’t see him do anything, or see any results of this magical concealing glamour, for that matter, but he nodded to me, so I headed down the road the way we had been going. I only got three steps before Hydan tapped me on the shoulder, and with his body concealing his hand and finger from Myrka, he pointed to my left, off the road. Then he whispered, “That way, oh brave and clueless leader!”
“Right, they are this way,” I said louder and headed off in the indicated direction.
We moved off into the woods, and there was a smaller trail through the underbrush. We followed it for about five minutes, and then Hydan held up a hand and said, “OK, my glamour won’t work if we get much closer, try taking a peek through those bushes over there,” he said, pointing.
Myrka and I moved over and crouched down behind the bush before parting some of the leaves to survey the area. What we found was a battle, three against one.
A saeran male, holding two Tanto style Japanese knives, one in each hand, was facing three creatures made from earth and stone. Their major limbs were a series of stones, seemingly held together by earthen joints. Their heads were a single stone, and their torso a pile of smaller stones. Each stone had some kind of petroglyph carved in a rectangle.
They moved with uncanny speed for something which was heavy enough to dent the ground each time they took a step.
“I don’t think knives are going to do much to those things!” I hissed quietly.
“No, but Derkaz magic might,” Myrka whispered. “Shall I kill them?”
I looked at the Tarvos sorceress frankly, and whispered back, “Can you?”
“Of course,” she replied.
I turned my gaze back to the battle. The saeran male feinted left, and then moved right, diving forward under the arm swing of one of the creatures. As he passed by, the saeran struck at the elbow, between two of the stones. The knife passed through and the pieces which made up the arm of the creature fell, losing all cohesion, becoming just rocks and dirt, but the creature seemed unaffected in overall health.
As the saeran came back to his feet, the one-armed creature dropped to a knee near the stones which had been its arm, and those stones reattached. When it stood it was whole again.
The other two kept the saeran busy dodging attacks.
I liked the saeran; he wasn’t backing down even in the face of these magical creatures he could not seem to kill.
“OK, take them,” I said to Myrka.
The first hint of a smile I’d ever seen her display appeared and then was gone just as quickly. She didn’t leap out and challenge the monsters, instead, she moved stealthily to a thick tree trunk, and then slipped to the next one when the monsters were facing away. She quickly got behind them, and then she stepped out boldly, raised both hands and chanted three quick words of a language I didn’t understand. That was odd; I’d understood all other languages we’d heard or seen. Then I remembered she had said something else in this language back in Chichen Itza when she had called down the blue energy to her knife.
This time, streaks of blue energy lanced out and struck the two nearest stone creatures. They instantly exploded, with bits and pieces of stone and earth going everywhere. I hit the ground, hoping the shrapnel didn’t take me out. I glanced sideways to see Hydan standing there, unconcerned, watching the whole thing with interest.
The blast didn’t seem to affect the third monster, or the saeran, but all the debris obscured his vision. I saw the third monster raise his two arms and move forward, ready to smash the semi-blinded saeran to mush. I ran out of hiding, yelling at the top of my lungs to try and distract the creature.
The stone monster heard me and swiveled to face my charge. I dove at it, coming in under the downward plunge of those stone arms, and tried to tackle it to the ground.
Oops.
It was like tackling a tree trunk. I hit, and it didn’t move. Try running at full speed, and dive forward into a telephone pole, you’ll get the idea. Actually, don’t, not unless you want to go to the hospital. I kind of spun off of the creature and landed in an undignified heap to the side.
But my little distraction, and several bruises and contusions, was all the saeran needed. He didn’t waste a moment and leaped forward toward the third creature as it moved over to finish me. His blades flashed and his first swing severed its stone head, then he lopped off the arms, and started on the legs. He swiftly cut through every earthen joint like a butcher taking apart a carcass for market.
Once all of the limbs were separated, it all collapsed to just stone and earth.
I lay there on my back, wondering how many bones I’d broken; from the pain, I decided it must be all of them.
Somewhere I heard Hydan laughing.
That’s when Myrka attacked the saeran.
She let loose one of those blasts of blue energy, but it seemed to bounce off of him when he raised a hand.
So she muttered something, and drew her knife, and blue energy flowed down onto the blade.
The saeran narrowed his eyes at this, and went to a crouch, ready to do battle.
I spit out some blood, trying to speak; and just as Myrka tried to behead the saeran I croaked out, “Stop fighting!”
She straightened up, “What?”
“Stop…” and I spit more blood, “fighting!” I wheezed.
“You said I could kill them!” she countered.
“The monsters, not the guy we were rescuing!” I croaked, just about passing out from the pain.
She look
ed surprised, “Oh… if you say so.”
She then sheathed her blade. The saeran kept a wary eye on her, and kept his distance, but he also put away his two tantos. Then he approached me and knelt down at my side.
I looked up into the face of the saeran, who I think was trying to discern if I was still alive.
“Running full speed into a stone golem was very foolish,” was his opening comment.
I grimaced. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time, he was going to smash you while you were blinded.”
“And you saved my life,” he replied, nodding his head as if confirming something.
“Maybe,” I said.
He was very solemn, “At nearly the cost of your own.”
Hydan walked up, knelt down and started running his hands over my limbs and torso.
“Am I supposed to tell you where it hurts?” I asked Hydan, “Because I can save you a lot of time, I think my left foot is passable, the rest is toast.”
That rat bastard actually snickered!
But, I noticed my pain went away wherever he ran his hand past. In fact, in a few moments, I was out of pain completely.
“You can get up now,” he said, getting to his own feet. “You will live to tackle a rock another day if you should so foolishly choose to do so again.”
I sat up, and wonder of wonders, I COULD sit up!
“Hey, what did you do, give me a health potion?” I asked.
He laughed, “Hardly.”
The saeran got to his feet, and then bowed to me from the waist, keeping his eyes locked on mine. At this moment I finally looked at the Glyph on his left cheek, it was not a Sivaeral nautilus, like mine, instead, it was some kind of kanji symbol, like in Japanese writing, or a Chinese character.
“You’re not a Sivaeral wizard!” I exclaimed.
He nodded, “I am Toji, Fourth of House Bakemono. I have journeyed to Abal on my honor quest.”
Hydan snickered.
Toji’s hand went to one of his sheathed tantos and a hard look gleamed in his eye, “Do not abuse the honor of my House, Friare, or I will challenge you and end your line!”
Myrka answered, “No, if anyone gets to kill the Friare, it will be me!”
