The little man fearlessly leapt from the wall to intercept the upcoming creature, and his knee-length, shaggy hair flew wildly behind his head as he planted his foot in the metal ‘stirrup’ built into the spear near the tip. His timing was perfect, and the foot-long metal ‘tip’ of the spear sank into the flying monster’s back, causing the creature to spasm as it crested the wall.
The flyer’s momentum was enough to bring it up over the battlements, but not much more. Its left wing appeared flaccid, and it began to spin in the air as it went up and over the wall entirely, taking the small figure with it as it sailed into the space between our wall and the main castle wall.
“Dancer has always had a flair for the dramatic,” observed Aemir dryly as the small figure removed the enchanted spear from the monster’s back and leapt off long before the flyer impacted on the cobblestones below.
I nodded as the small figure managed to assume the same posture with his tightly-gripped spear as he had used to impale the flyer, but this time he stuck the tip of his spear into the cobblestones, apparently breaking his fall enough that he merely rolled away from the spear instead of breaking every bone in his lower body.
“Have to give the little man some credit, though,” I chided before I looked up at where the High Sheriff was stationed on the main castle wall behind us. “He knows his limits; there’s no way he survives that fall without making the most out of Sky Splitter’s powers.”
Aemir nodded reluctantly. “It is not his skills I dislike,” he said as he tested his sword arm, “but the pageantry; battle is not a show.”
My eyes broke from Dancer’s form as he gathered his spear and made for a nearby stairwell and I looked to the top of the Inner Wall. Stationed next to the High Sheriff was the unmistakable figure of Baeld, wearing spiked metal armor which appeared to almost glow in the silvery moonlight. He was over seven feet tall, and had to weigh at least four hundred pounds even without the armor. His massive greatsword, which would have been essentially impossible for any normal man to wield with even both hands, he held loosely in one. His impossibly black skin, which resembled the color of dry charcoal, reflected none of the moonlight which illuminated the rest of the battlefield.
A flyer had gone over our position and made its way directly for the High Sheriff, but Baeld would have none of it. He stepped between his charge and the flyer, lashing out with his massive sword and severing one of the monster’s arms before the flyer’s bulk crashed into him. What ensued was a mighty struggle, and the soldiers atop the inner wall backed far away from the deadlocked titans.
I had heard that Baeld had about as much finesse as a landslide, and that observation was proven more than accurate after a brief struggle. The flyer’s scorpion-like tail lashed about in search of a target before the midnight-skinned giant grabbed the flyer in a bear hug which trapped one of its wings in Baeld’s long, herculean arms. Without warning, Baeld pushed off over the battlements, plummeting toward the cobblestone surface some eighty feet below with the monster firmly in his grip.
The flyer thrashed violently as they fell, stabbing with its talons and tail, but Baeld’s armor protected him from the worst of it. Still, I doubted that his armor would protect him from the fall.
They crashed into the stones, their combined bulk weighing in at an easy half ton, but Baeld was able to keep the monster between himself and the stone surface. The result was a sickening crack of bone being crushed against stone and both figures lay motionless for several seconds.
Impossibly—at least for a normal human, which Baeld could never be confused for—Baeld stirred and slowly stood before turning back to the gatehouse, obviously intent on making his way back up to the High Sheriff’s side. Almost as quickly as he stood away from it, the body of the monster he had driven into the cobblestones transformed into that same thick ooze which seemed to compose everything else we were fighting.
“It would appear that Dancer is not the only one with a flair for the dramatic,” Aemir quipped. “Are all people in these lands so flamboyant?”
With eerie timing, the small, hairy form of Dancer appeared, complete with the short spear which was easily a foot longer than he was tall. “Dancer not dramatic,” he snapped at Aemir, “Dancer Master of Giants and Slayer of Dragons!”
“That was not a dragon you killed in the forest,” Aemir corrected him dryly with a wag of his finger, “it was a snake…with wings.”
“Gentlemen,” I snapped, which thankfully got their attention. “I believe we have bigger things to worry about,” I said with a wave of my hand at the approaching force.
Dancer seethed, and while it’s normally hard to take a four foot tall man seriously, we had all seen just how deadly he could be when the terrain was with him—which it was at that particular moment. Aemir reluctantly nodded before Dancer turned to the wall and, using his spear, vaulted deftly up on top of a short section of it which was almost as tall as he was.
“Incoming!” yelled the lookout again, but I had spotted the incoming missile before he had alerted us to it this time.
This missile was clearly aimed at the area of the inner wall manned by the High Sheriff’s personal force, and it looked like this one might have the angle and velocity to make it. That the next one might actually make it all the way into the inner courtyard, which was filled with the frightened populace of the town surrounding the castle, was terrifying.
The civilians within would be unable to defend themselves against such a monster, and there were too many helpless people packed together to allow the soldiers stationed there to move quickly enough to respond before the death toll skyrocketed.
The black ball impacted on the upper corner of the battlements, creating a shower of stone shards like the one that had happened right in front of me a few minutes earlier. Predictably, the ball turned into ooze shortly after impact and writhed its way up and over the ramparts where it was met by the soldiers stationed there.
There was no panic on the faces of those men, as they had endured several attacks like this one, and they went to work preventing the thing from moving onto the walkway they inhabited. But the monster had closed range this time, and its lashing appendages claimed two soldier’s lives in the first instants.
But they had looks of grim determination on their faces, and they appeared to know that they would succeed in dismembering the thing before it was able to claim further life.
“’Master of Giants’ you may be, but I doubt you could ‘master’ the one out there, Dancer,” Aemir joked with a tilt of his head in the direction of the siege juggernaut. “It is quite large, after all,” he pressed.
Dancer’s eyes had found the target as soon as he had leapt up onto the wall, and without breaking his gaze on it, he shrugged. “Size not matter,” he retorted acidly, “big target make easy target.”
“Jezran!” boomed the amplified voice of Magos Antolin, the sheer volume of which got my immediate attention, to say nothing of the fact that he was clearly demanding my presence.
I quickly made my way toward his position on the battlements, followed closely by Aemir and Dancer. “Yes, Master,” I replied when I made it to his side.
“The juggernaut must be brought down or the gate will certainly fall,” he replied, his voice thankfully reduced to a normal volume. A smirk crossed his normally impassive features before he added conversationally, “How confident are you in your Summoning skills?”
I felt the color drain from my face. I had actually failed to complete the Treaty of Binding with the ‘entity’ whom I had previously engaged in formal negotiations…but I hadn’t told anyone of that failure for a myriad of reasons.
“In truth, Master,” I began hesitantly, “I haven’t quite got those ones mastered.” I really hoped he didn’t ask (or, perhaps a better work would be ‘demand’) that I try anyway. Summoning a supernatural creature into a physical manifestation required a huge amount of power and a commensurate level of concentration, and to date I hadn’t even displayed the sk
ills of a novice in that particular field, forgetting about the fact that I had failed to secure the services of a suitable entity.
Antolin shook his head in disappointment, with his hairless scalp reflecting the moonlight almost as well as a mirror would. “What of your latest Dream Casting?” he asked patiently as battle erupted between a group of soldiers and a flyer less than fifty feet away.
I shook my head. “I haven’t found a way to consistently repeat its effects, Master,” I said bleakly. I knew this wouldn’t go over well later, but it was the truth.
My Master’s eyes narrowed. “We shall discuss your study habits at a later date,” he said darkly, “as well as your apparent affinity with forces you clearly do not understand,” he finished with a nod to the disk-shaped Spell Key strapped to my hand.
I shrugged my shoulders, half indifferently and half despairingly. I really didn’t have time for his cryptic nonsense. I knew he wouldn’t be happy when I used the thing, but what choice did I have? My own talents apparently lay in the realms of Somnomancy and Augury, meaning dream magic and certain divinatory spells, both of which had limited use on the battlefield. My latest attempt at bringing my Somnomancy to a fight had been met with mixed results, and I hadn’t figured out how to repeat even that much yet. I could try it if all else failed, but I wasn’t sure that even if it worked I would survive the experience.
He was obviously displeased with my response but he gestured toward the siege juggernaut with his staff, whose red and blue marble lines had dimmed slightly since the beginning of the battle, indicating that he also possessed limited energy reserves. “The only way they can breach the wall is to bring down the Middle Gate,” he explained, “and brute force appears their method of choice. I believe I can bring down the colossus directly, but the price will be high,” he said with a meaningful look which I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to understand.
“Master,” was all I could muster. I had suspected for a few months that my House’s Magos was an accomplished practitioner of ‘Grey Arts,’ as they had been dubbed by Imperial Doctrine. These ‘Grey Arts’ were not entirely outlawed, but they were also not formally recognized as their own legitimate branches of study due to political backlash, if I understood correctly. My familiarity with the Imperial bureaucratic mess was limited, and I readily admit that I was all too happy to keep it that way.
“Compose yourself, Journeyman!” he snapped. “I will not be making any grand sacrifices, and neither will any living person here,” he said sternly, and I felt a chill run down my spine at a caveat like ‘living person.’ “But should I fail,” he continued, “you will be all that stands between the colossus and the inner sanctum of the castle. Be certain to reserve enough of your energy to at least slow it until dawn.”
In the background, I saw another flyer tear into a battlement two hundred feet away, laying waste to the dozen men stationed there in a brief, savage maelstrom authored by its talons and tail. Reinforcements immediately arrived and they drove the flyer off, but the damage had been done.
“Yes, Master,” I agreed after witnessing the gory display. “What do you need from us?” I asked, trying to be of some assistance even though I doubted I would succeed.
Antolin shook his head. “Stay here and conserve your strength,” he said sharply. “We shall know soon enough if I am to succeed.” With that, he struck the butt of his staff onto the stones beneath his feet and the protective field surrounding him flared. Its deep, green color illuminating the battlements for a hundred feet and within seconds he had levitated three feet off the floor. He thrust his staff toward the malevolent, green, light marking the head of the juggernaut.
Accelerating at an impressive rate, he hurtled off toward the lumbering giant leaving a scant trail of glowing blue dust in his wake which disappeared almost immediately.
I kept eye contact with his fleeting form and gripped my hands on the edge of the wall. My Master wouldn’t have sped off at this particular moment if he could have waited a few more, which meant that whatever he had planned would require a truly tremendous amount of energy—and I wanted to see it happen. I had never seen Magos Antolin in action before, and while we weren’t exactly on the best of terms, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to gauge his abilities for a plethora of reasons.
Without closing my eyes, I summoned the glyphs and symbols to my mind which would form a spell allowing me to temporarily see the form his magic would take. Different forms of magic (Augury, Somnomancy, Summoning, etc..) have different colors when viewed through certain magical lenses and this simple spell would let me see that aura, as well as the rough shape and size of the equations and structures he would employ to create his desired effect. This particular spell, often referred to as Mage Sight, was taught to anyone who showed magical talent so it was very easy to conjure.
The Magos and Master of House Wiegraf soared toward the juggernaut, the shimmering field surrounding him growing in brightness the closer he got to his target. Once my own spell of Augury was completed, which required a miniscule amount of energy, I could see what he was going to employ and it shook me to the core.
Not only was the size of the spell he was about to cast huge, fully ten times the size of my own previous focus key-assisted manifestation, but it burned with a sickly, orange color. I knew then what I had suspected for months: my Master, Magos Antolin Wiegraf, was a Necromancer. Necromancy, or magic binding the bodies and souls of living (or previously living) creatures, was the only type of magic bearing that particular aura.
It appeared as though there were several spells at work simultaneously, and after I studied it for the fleeting seconds it existed he discharged its awful power directly into the form of the lumbering siege juggernaut. My simple Mage Sight spell operating at such a great distance was unable to ascertain exactly what those spells were individually. I did note, however, that his staff and his robes pulsated in unison with a rich, blue color which stood out from the other hues made visible by Mage Sight.
The final effect was less visually spectacular than I expected it would be, with barely a flash of visible, orange light accompanying a low, droning sound which swept across the terrain like a shockwave almost below the range a human ear could detect.
However, the entire assembled host surrounding the juggernaut ceased their forward motion as one and the flyers fell from the sky almost instantly, their forms having gone rigid. One of them fell onto the ramparts near to my position, and its body impacted with that horrible cracking sound I had learned to mean bones snapping beneath skin.
To my surprise, the body of the monster did not transform into the wine-colored ooze like the previous ones. It simply lay motionless there, prompting the soldiers atop the walls to surround it with their spears. A gust of wind came in the instant before first spear was thrust into its lifeless form, which blasted the body apart into a shower of dust or ash which disappeared almost immediately after taking to the wind.
I looked back out over the battlefield and could not find the shimmering field of Antolin’s wards. I scanned for the light of the juggernaut’s ‘head,’ and at first I saw nothing. I felt a measure of elation that somehow Master Antolin had dealt the final blow of the battle and, indeed, had brought down the colossus.
Then my hopes were dashed as I saw something slowly rising from the ground. The brightness of its green, pulsating light had faded significantly, but it was still there. After reaching its feet it paused before resuming its march toward our wall, this time without its fellows as the rest of the invaders were motionless. Antolin hadn’t done the entire job single-handedly, but now there was just the lumbering monstrosity to deal with.
I took a deep breath and calmed myself; it looked like I was going to have to try it after all.
Deep within my mind I searched for the first of many glyphs and sigils I would need in order to enter the consciousness of the invader. We had reason to believe that the invaders were not truly sovereign entities as such, but instead were some
form of remotely controlled constructs. Antolin and I had surmised that control of such an army was possible for a single person if their level of concentration was high enough, and that person had just become my primary target.
The concentration required for such control requires an almost trance-like state of mind, much like casting a spell. That state of mind actually allows an expert of Dream Magic to treat the target though it were in a deep sleep. I was no ‘expert,’ so it was a long shot. But it was all we had.
Summoning the symbols and patterns into my mind’s eye which were needed for Dream Magic was more difficult for me than any other magic, which was odd since I had quite the reputation as the most promising Somnomancer the Imperial City of Veldyrian had ever seen. Finding the right pieces of the spell to assemble took even longer, and was more difficult than with any other spells I used, but eventually I managed to drag them from the recesses of my mind. I had become used to the strange resistance I felt when delving into this region of my mind, but it didn’t make it any easier.
The first spell was simple, at least in principle: I would insert my own consciousness into my target’s dream state and look for the person’s dream-representation. The energy required to initiate such contact was significant but the even larger drain was maintaining that connection for any period of time, especially if the target was to break his or her dream-like state for some reason—like realizing I had infiltrated their subconscious.
The harder part of my spell’s preparation was bringing a weapon with me. Often times there are plenty of things available inside of a person’s dream to use against them, and since belief is the basis of power in dreams, a person is far more likely to believe that something their own mind created is very real (and therefore very dangerous) than something with which their mind is unfamiliar.
Still, if I created a powerful enough weapon to take with me, I could at the very least sever the person’s control over the juggernaut which would probably cause the lumbering siege engine to lose cohesion and collapse. At best, the backlash and shock of being killed in the dream world might actually be strong enough to kill the person on the other end.
Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) Page 2
