Tony and the Queen of Iziral

by Rosier, D. R.

  “I was wrong about the rape part, they’re bonded, let’s…” I gave brief thought to letting them finish, but fuck that, and then said louder, “Hello.”

  I snickered, at the cursing and shuffling as they jumped up and put their clothes on. It was easy to relate to their frustration and annoyance, I had a rich sex life which meant I was very familiar with interruptions.

  A man’s voice said, “What the fuck, who is that?”

  I decided to risk a small light, and lit a small fire near the ground with Jenna’s power.

  “We’re just visiting, who are you?”

  The man was in a badly rumpled, and hastily thrown on guard uniform. The young lady, his mate, was in a white dress with flowers embroidered in it, and it looked to have seen better days.

  He took in all the people in front of him and said, “Holy shit. I’m Mark, and this is my mate Daisy. Are you the rebellion with the princess? Can you get us off this island?”

  I said, “Slow down. I’m Tony. We have a mission first, but we can take two of you with us.”

  His eyes furrowed in confusion, and then widened.

  “No, you don’t understand. We just went off to be alone, you know? There are over five hundred of us, just a half a mile that way.”

  Mark pointed south, and continued, “There’s only fourteen of us sorcerers that managed to escape the city, out of all that refused to murder sorceresses. But there’s five hundred and thirteen of those.

  He blushed, “After we escaped, I couldn’t keep my eyes off this one.”

  Daisy glared at him, “They didn’t need to know that.”

  I laughed when Mark blushed, and said, “Well, we’re here to fix things, and put an end to that nonsense.”

  Mark shook his head, “They have just over three thousand guards, and a trap set for you. The other two thousand… are dead, for not following orders. I see you have a lot of people here, but it isn’t nearly enough, not with those two assholes, excuse the language, those two diviners.”

  I looked around, “Do you think you’d be willing to share intel, we have some on the city, but nothing since this latest madness. I could help out the sorceresses while we’re here.”

  Mark’s eyes narrowed, “Help out?”

  I clarified, “I’m Tony, the rebels’ diviner, and I can set their magic free.”

  Daphne snorted, “Rebels.”

  I turned to her and smiled, “I know we aren’t rebels, but to them we are.”

  Lia snickered.

  That’s when Mark did a double take at Daphne, paled, and kneeled.

  “Princess, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you until I heard your voice. I was part of your guard that day you were taken.”

  Daisy stared at me with a shocked look on her face, still stuck on the diviner and freeing magic statement.

  I said, “We call her queen, she rules our kingdom, and shortly she will be queen of Iziral as well.”

  Daisy said, “If you can do that, we’ll help you.”

  I frowned, and imagined five hundred more sorceresses, but with no training.

  Daphne said, “Mark, you can get up. For this mission Tony is in command, and this isn’t the time and place for that.”

  Mark got up, and I freed Daisy’s magic with a thought. It was easy to begin with, and I’d done it thousands of times the last two years, which made it almost automatic with a bare degree of focus. Daisy’s eyes widened, and I saw a few tears. It was a common reaction when they felt their magic again for the first time, but always made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

  Mark said, “We would be happy to not only give you information, but swear to you as our sovereign and join the fight. What they did was beyond horrible.”

  Daphne paled, and her voice was shaky, “Are you saying out of over twelve thousand sorceresses, only a little over five hundred made it out alive?”

  That, sounded right, there were a hundred thousand people or so in Pheles, that meant twenty-five thousand wielders, half of which should be women. I couldn’t even process such a slaughter. The scope of it was too big, my mind refused to grasp it.

  But then, massacres were more than common enough on my old world, and just as senseless.

  Daisy looked away for a moment, and then knelt down, and swore fealty to Daphne as her queen.

  As if to clarify her motives, she added in a soft voice, almost as if to herself, “I’d do anything to end the king’s tyranny.”

  It made me wonder what she’d lost, and the sadness of all that death finally settled on me. A large number was too difficult to relate too, but this one woman’s grief and desire for revenge brought it home, and I felt my own rage answer hers. The king would pay.

  Daphne told her to rise, and then there was an awkward moment of silence.

  I prompted Mark, “Take us to them?”

  Mark just nodded, and then wrapped an arm around Daisy and led the way.

  Lia said, “They’ll be slaughtered if they joined us.”

  I nodded in partial agreement, if we attacked now they would be.

  “We aren’t on a strict timeline, so what if we trained them for a couple of days, purely on defensive tactics? If the king has three thousand, right now they outnumber us by two to one. They’d still have a three to two edge with five hundred more, but that’s better than nothing. With the diviners pulling down our protections for their troops to attack, the more defenders we have raising multiple defenses, the better.”

  I felt a bit guilty saying it, but it was just the simple truth. Plus, these women wouldn’t thank me for excluding them from earning their freedom, or getting revenge for the sorceress massacre, not to mention two thousand guards that weren’t assholes. They probably hadn’t had a chance, not with two diviners siding with the larger force.

  Hopefully, the uprisings on the other islands had been more successful and not so one sided. It was a grim hope, but there it was.

  Lia replied, “Two days should be enough to teach them to throw up walls and blocks, but with no subtlety.”

  I nodded, “Do we need subtlety? Their goal isn’t to apprehend, or for us to make them competent guards, just to protect our side. We also don’t have to weed out the guilty and innocent, any of the decent ones we might have faced are already dead.”

  Lia agreed.

  Sharon added, “I agree, I don’t like it, but we can make them effective defensively.”

  Daphne asked, “What about protection, Amara and the others can’t keep a block up for days, we’d planned on that just being hours. The longer we wait to attack, the more the chance they’ll come find us and the source of the breach to the island.”

  I thought for a moment, because I hadn’t considered that angle. Letting our guard down for any amount of time in enemy territory would be stupid. Fortunately, the answer was obvious.

  “I’ll build a keep ward, and place it around wherever these folks are staying. We’ll be warned of anyone approaching before they get within a thousand yards. That should give the elves enough time to get the elven ward back up if necessary.”

  Making the keep wards was fairly easy now too, they just took a good thirty minutes, most of that time was drawing the circle and symbols. After all, I’d made eighteen of them so far, and the last ten or so I hadn’t even had to check my notes. I actually already had one with me, but that was reserved for the castle after we took it, assuming we won.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first indication of over five hundred people living out here was dim lighting, and I felt four other sorcerers who were apparently on night guard. Most of the others were asleep as the five hundred some odd suppressed sorceresses, and fourteen sorcerers in total entered my range. A couple of minutes later, buildings took shape in the darkness between the trees, all one story.

  As we got closer, I could tell they’d actually built a little town, although the buildings were large, and I guessed them to be barracks style. For some reason I’d pictured people camping in the woods in primitive
tents and stuff, a left over thought process from my old world. It would take an earth wielder minutes to raise these buildings.

  Not having separate housing, would keep their footprint in the forest much smaller, which is probably why they avoided smaller houses. They’re seemed to be ten larger buildings with fifty sorceresses each in them, and one smaller building for the fourteen sorcerers, nine of which were currently sleeping.

  That also explained why Mark and Daisy had needed a forest rendezvous for their tryst, there probably wasn’t any privacy to be found in those buildings. I also got good vibes from Mark, and all of their magic was clear of turbulence. It was nice to meet honestly good guards for once, how they survived on the crown island of Pheles was a wonder.

  I didn’t feel very many metals nearby, but there were tons of small stones throughout the forest. I channeled Marie’s magic and prepared the ground by flattening it and moving away the brush, then pulled the all the small rocks toward me, and into a pile. Then I drew a circle around it.

  As I started with the symbols, I was aware of my mates talking with the sorcerers and answering questions, but couldn’t spare the concentration to really listen. I also knew, that they kept an eye on me while I was vulnerable in that way.

  When I finished, I went through the three-minute chant, and then after quickly checking the spells viability, I activated it. There seemed to be no difference between small perfectly formed ball bearings, and irregular small rocks. They sped away and formed three rings.

  I found Mark a few feet away, talking with my mates and his. The other sorcerers had been woken up, and were mingling with the rest of our people.

  “Don’t be alarmed, we have three elves with us, who are about to join us.”

  I said it loudly enough, to be heard by all the sorcerers.

  Mark asked, “They’ll know the wards are ready?”

  I looked around and gestured at the trees, “They’ve heard and seen everything tonight, we are in a forest.”

  He nodded after considering my statement for a moment, “We’ve just been organizing the training, now that you’re done with the ward, should we wake up the sorceresses? Do you need to rest first?”

  I smiled, “Thanks, but no. The magic wants to be free, it will be simple to undo what the other diviners did to them to suppress their magic. That’s a part of the reason permanent suppression is so difficult for a diviner, it isn’t natural.”

  He looked relieved that it wouldn’t be difficult, and nodded to his mate Daisy, who headed off to one of the buildings.

  I smiled when I felt Amara’s hand on my neck, “This is fortuitous for us.”

  She couldn’t really sneak up behind me because of her magic, but as far as my ears went I hadn’t heard a thing as she’d closed quickly.

  I sighed, “Yes, but also a tragedy.”

  She was silent for a moment, and then said, “Don’t let your anger turn you into what they are.”

  I turned and shook my head, even now as my anger stoked toward the king and the evil done here, her beauty struck me. Of course, her magic would tell her how angry I really was, even though I hid it from the others.

  “I have no plans to torture the bastard, although he deserves it. A stout tree, a merciful death, and an unmarked grave or pyre will suffice. I just want him dead, where he can’t do any more harm.”

  I think I finally truly understood what the goddess had meant, by tempted by power. I really didn’t want to be a king, or a ruler. I never had, I’d just assumed that’s what she meant because it was a typical thing people would crave. Political power and rule I didn’t care about.

  But it would be so easy for me to create weapons of mass destruction, and easily annihilate the enemy in the upcoming confrontation. I could create a large light, and fly at four thousand feet up, and simply burn their lines from the earth, the diviners wouldn’t know what hit them.

  I could build the equivalent of artillery, and bomb the fuck out of them from this very spot, and raze the palace to the ground.

  I could build automated spells, that would clean an island down to the bedrock, while I hung out on another island altogether in complete safety.

  I could with experimentation, figure out EFPs that would destroy ships on the horizon with one strike from the kinetic force alone. Goddess knows what would happen with a large kinetic impact in a city shot from a mile or two up.

  With time and experimentation, I could do far more with scientific knowledge from my world, along with a little creativity. The last two years and idle thoughts had given me many ideas. Some just wondrous, and many horrific.

  The problem was, that invincibility wouldn’t last. Others would see it, and with time, be able to duplicate it. That was the true danger of those temptations of power she’d spoken of. That’s what the goddess had warned me against. Not that I would seize power, but that I would show this world what horrors were truly possible with magic. Right now, they were limited mostly to a couple of hundred yards, and by their ignorance of how the world really worked without advanced sciences, were severely limited in the breadth and scope of damage that they were capable of.

  No, it would be better to die, to fail, and to have the people suffer under Iziral another few hundred years than it would be to allow any of that information to get out.

  We had to do this the hard way, and hope for the best. The elves, and myself, would have to be enough of an edge to win.

  The question was, could I really do it though, watch my mates die, and let myself fall? When I could just simply pull a light out of my pocket, and kill both of the enemy diviners with a thought?

  Temptation was a bitch. It was bad enough I’d taught them about sonic weapons, pressure waves, and vacuums.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It didn’t take very long to free the sorceresses’ magic, and even less time for all of them to swear fealty to Daphne. Not one declined, including the fourteen sorcerers.

  With fifteen hundred of our own guards and volunteer fleet along, there were more than enough people to start training the women immediately, the sorcerers were trained as well, but only in our specific group tactics and expectations. They could already wield their power.

  All except Mark that is, who took us into the smaller building.

  It was Mark, Sharon, Lia, Amara, Daphne, Marie, Jenna, Gorwin, Ashera, myself, and a few of the squad leaders who would make sure any new intelligence got disseminated down to all our people when we were done.

  Mark led us over to a stone table, they didn’t have much in the way of luxuries out here.

  The tabletop reformed into a model of the city, as well as the immediate surrounding area. The city was right on the northern coast, and was more compact than the city on Polperro, but had almost twice the population. It looked familiar, the high walls, which were both warded and went all the way around the city. The northern gate led directly into the port district, which was the only part of the city not protected in that way.

  Mark pointed at the southern gate.

  “The plans all revolve around you attacking this gate, or from sea. Half the fleet is currently in the harbor, two hundred ships, and from what I knew of last, one of the diviners is out there with the fleet admiral.”

  I perked up at that information, maybe I wouldn’t have to face them both at once after all.

  He noticed and shook his head.

  “That’s just in case your fleet of one hundred actually tried a normal attack on the island. The second diviner would have moved to the fleet in that case while the first held off the initial attack. It’s the same for the southern defense, as soon as they spot you coming, and they have lots of watchers outside the city, the other diviner will abandon the fleet and join the other long before battle could be joined.

  “What I would propose, is we circle around wide to the east of the city, there’s much more cover on the shore from that direction. If we move carefully, we might be able to close with the port before they can act to join tog
ether. The northern city was lightly guarded last I’d been there, most of the ground troops are kept by the south wall.”

  I frowned, “If we did that, their fleet of two hundred ships would be able to attack us from the harbor, and once the southern guard got moving, we’d be crushed between their two forces.”

  He nodded, “You’d have to act quickly, but you’d have fifteen minutes or so by the time they mobilized and made it across the city. It’s the best chance to take out one of the diviners before they can join forces against you.”

  Lia sighed, “We have plans for that fleet, it would be better if we didn’t have to destroy it. Once the battle is joined, we won’t have much choice.”

  It was risky, but if there was a chance to fight the two diviners separately, it would really increase the odds of success.

  “How about a small strike mission in the middle of the night tonight. If we took a small group we could hide even better, with the darkness they wouldn’t see it coming. If we’re lucky, the diviner would be asleep and I can just kill him without doing much harm to the ship at all. Even awake, he might not even detect our approach with the elves protecting our group.

  “Then we retreat, and come back a day and a half later with all the troops to take the southern wall and secure the city.”

  I wasn’t an assassin, but I also wouldn’t fight fair if I didn’t have to.

  Mark shook his head, “There are wards along here,” he pointed at the port between the water and the northern city wall, “We can sneak until we reach there, but they’ll know were there a minute or so before we are in magical range to strike. With a small group and limited defenses, it wouldn’t take them long to overwhelm you.”

  “Tunnels,” Marie said suddenly.

  I frowned, and she expanded on that when everyone turned her way.

  “Tunnels, we’ll tunnel to avoid the watchers, and pop up just out of range of the wards on the southern wall and surge forward to attack. If we’re lucky and strike hard, Tony here can take out the diviner stationed there, long before the one from the ship on sea has time to come. Those watchers will be worthless, if we dig under them.