by Chris Fox
Voria hesitated. This ship was impressive, but could it muster a feat like that? She had no idea if they could do anything to help.
Ikadra’s sapphire pulsed a deep, slow, angry beat. “I don’t know who pissed in your cereal, but you should treat the woman saving your planet with a little respect. We’ll take care of the binder problem, and when we do you’d better be ready with an apology.”
Nimitz ignored Ikadra, and locked eyes with Voria. “I’ve got a battle to plan. I’m not expecting much out of you, Voria. Sure would be nice if I was wrong for once.” Nimitz reached toward the screen, and the feed terminated.
Voria turned slowly to Ikadra. “Please tell me that this ship actually can clear up an endless army of corpses, and somehow deal with the binders that summoned them.”
“Uh.” Ikadra pulsed nervously. “I mean, theoretically…”
“So you have no plan to remove these corpses, but you just promised that we’d do so?” Voria snorted, more in amusement than exasperation. When one was surrounded with impossibilities every day, either one learned to laugh, or lay down under the weight of it.
“I’m pretty sure we can do it. This ship is the ultimate spell amplifier,” Ikadra offered. “You can empower almost any spell, and with enough magic, it will engulf the planet. The ship will pull from all crew, so you’ve basically got access to all of their collective magic.”
“So what would happen if I amplified a void bolt?” Voria waved a hand and the scry-screen shifted to a closer view of the planet, the area over Fort Crockett, specifically.
“Uh, you’d punch a big hole through their planet?” Ikadra offered.
Voria tapped her lip and considered that. After a moment she smiled. “So if I were to tailor, say, a counterspell that targeted spirit magic, it would engulf the entire planet?”
“Sure.” Ikadra flashed enthusiastically. “It wouldn’t stop the binders or anything, though.”
“But I could cut off the bulk of their armies.” She smiled wickedly. “That would buy Aran and his company time, which we could use to craft a more permanent solution to the binders.” She glanced at Ikadra. “So what’s involved in this amplification?”
“Well, it does take a while. And it needs to be powered, which, like I said, will require the help of everyone on board.”
Voria blinked. “That seems so obvious. We tap into all the tech mages aboard, and use their magic to fuel the amplification spell. That’s what makes this vessel so powerful.”
“Yup,” Ikadra pulsed, “and it means that if we get more mages, we become totally badass.”
“Pickus, inform all mages that their services are needed.” If she could organize this ritual, then in a few hours the planet would be free of corpses, and any other creatures the binders had enslaved.
45
Teodros
Eros knew doom had come to Shaya the very moment the Fissure cracked the darkness behind their moon. He glanced up at the sky through the Arcanaca’s transparent ceiling, and dread mired his feet to the deck. Tremendous black claws seized the edge of the Fissure, and a scaly monstrosity emerged.
At first, Eros assumed it to be a Void Wyrm, massive in size, yet otherwise unremarkable. Then he saw the milky, white eyes, and the gaping wound in the chest. A binder had animated this monstrosity, and while that would make it slower than its living counterpart, it would also make it immune to all but catastrophic damage.
His hand shot up and he sketched a missive to Erika. The spell whizzed away, and an instant later an illusory version of her appeared next to him.
“Tender?” She blinked. She appeared to be in the middle of oiling her sword.
“Scramble every fighter we have, and contact Ducius. Tell him to get the fleet mobilized over Shaya.” Eros kept eye contact the entire time, and she picked up on the gravity of his tone.
“At once.” She slid her blade back into its scabbard. “Shall I meet you on the Arcanaca when it’s done?”
He nodded. “As soon as you can manage.”
Eros killed the missive and turned his attention back to the Fissure in the sky above. It hadn’t stopped growing. Cracks now veined across the night sky, their edges crumbling only when they reached the direct starlight outside the planet’s umbral shadow.
The beast had emerged entirely now, but made no move to approach. Instead, it drifted further from the world, and another Wyrm began to emerge. And another. All titanic monstrosities, with centuries’ thick scales. All had the same rheumy eyes, and most had identifiable wounds. Their sheer size would make animation costly. Who possessed enough magic to bind so many?
Smaller Wyrms began to emerge, each moving to join the larger flight. Eros counted twenty-nine by the time the flow stopped. He turned toward Shaya’s upper branches, tensing when he saw his own navy lifting off. They had twenty-seven ships of the line, the oldest, strongest vessels Shaya had ever created. Reinforcing that were seventeen spellfighters, though their pilots did not number among the finest he’d seen.
Below his armada, chaos had erupted on the tree itself. Mages reported to battle stations, while civilians made for shelters built into the tree itself. They would offer scant protection if their fleet were overcome, as Eros knew in his heart that it would be. He’d dreamed this moment countless times, fragments of it, at least.
He knew what came next. He knew what came out of that Fissure, though somehow the name had been kept from him. Only now did he realize the awful truth, that the being clawing its way through the Fissure had obscured his identity until it no longer mattered if Eros learned it.
“Teodros,” he whispered in awe.
The titanic Wyrm extended a pair of city-sized wings, then fixed its hellish gaze on Eros. Not on his world, or even on his ship. It saw through all that, and it looked him directly in the eye. He saw no sigils, but a missive arrived, whispering in his ear. “If you flee, you will live. She will not.”
Eros sketched a missive of his own, flinging it into orbit. “I do not run from Wyrms. I slay them.”
He extended a hand and withdrew his eldest staff from his void pocket. The dark haft hummed in his grip, a silent welcome. “It is time to fulfill the task for which you were created, my friend.”
The staff pulsed understanding. It knew that it would not survive this, but it also knew why the sacrifice was necessary. For some to live, others would die today. He would die today.
Eros raised the staff toward the sky, and held it aloft as he pulled deeply from the well of magical power in his chest. The golden energy surged down his arm, flowing into the staff in a frenetic staccato of pulses. The staff began to glow, slightly, then with increasing brilliance.
That brilliance grew to a level that would blind any who looked at it, until Eros and his ship appeared to be a star in the sky over Shaya. But the light did not blind him. He was of the light, and the light was of him. Eros held that light as the approaching dragon flight neared the edge of the prismatic barrier protecting Shaya from the lifeless moon that lay beyond.
He waited until the smaller, faster Wyrms passed through. Then Eros finally released the torrent of life, amplified through the diamond at the staff’s tip. A beam of golden light streaked into the shield, and a ripple of golden energy passed along the entire surface, painting it gold.
Spellfighters screamed by overhead, and Eros smiled grimly as they converged on the Wyrms he’d allowed through the field. Those few had been cut off, and stood no chance on their own.
He watched the next wave of Wyrms fly unerringly toward the field, but when they reached it the golden energy flared and each Wyrm was incinerated. Puffs of ash drifted away into the void—first one, then two, then a dozen. Nearly all the smaller Wyrms were destroyed, save those the spellfighters were quickly dispatching.
A gust of wind breezed through the room, delivering another missive. “Well played, Tender. A costly spell, though.”
Eros winced as a sharp crack echoed across the deck. He looked up to see the staff’s d
iamond split, then shatter. The golden energy in the staff flickered, and then died. His connection to the staff died with it, and inexplicable sadness welled up in him. It was a tool. A construct. Yet in many ways, he’d been a friend, and now that friend was dead.
The shield flickered, then returned to its previous translucency. The rest of the Wyrms advanced, winging their way through the shield and toward the spellfighters. Eros raised a hand and sketched a void sigil, then an earth, then three more intricately-woven void. When the spell completed, he raised his hand, and then swept down suddenly.
The first Wyrm to reach the fighters—one of the original six massive ones—dropped from the sky like a rock, slamming into acres of farmland near the edge of the bubble. A titanic cloud of dust burst into the air, temporarily obscuring the dragon. When it cleared, the abomination was already clawing its way back to its feet, though thankfully minus a wing.
The spellfighters had used the reprieve to retreat safely behind the fleet, which had just began its first salvo of spells. A cascade of golden bolts lanced out from every vessel and they converged on the front rank of dragons. The brilliance washed over them, burning away wings, faces, legs, until a grisly rain of desiccated corpses began over those fields.
Then Teodros entered Shaya’s bubble. He sketched so swiftly Eros could barely track the spell being constructed. He had enough time to marvel briefly, then Teodros released his spell. A ball of earth appeared in the sky above the Shayan fleet, but that ball quickly flattened into a disk that spun out wider and wider, like a pie crust being made.
The disk had no apparent ill effect, save that it cast a deep shadow over the fleet. Shadow. “Goddess, no.”
A Fissure split the sky over the fleet, veining out in the darkness provided by the disk—out of reach of the sun, and cast in the momentary gap when the Shayan mages were recovering and thus unable to use their life magic to summon the kind of light to destroy a Fissure.
The very instant the cracks were wide enough, a sea of fleshy, grey tentacles slithered through every gap. They came in all sizes, but large and small they wove unerringly toward the closest vessels. The rope tendrils wrapped around each vessel they could reach, then yanked the unfortunate ships back into the lightless depths.
Eros sketched a counterspell, and flung it at the disk. The disk shattered, and the rays of light fell upon the twisted tentacles and the Fissure itself. Both tentacles and the Fissure began to dissolve, but not before carrying a half dozen ships back into the darkness to be devoured by whatever the tentacles were attached to.
Another missive whispered through the room. “You should pay more attention to your surroundings, Tender.”
Eros spun around, scanning the sky for whatever threat Teodros had in store for him. He spotted movement below and realized that several beetle-like creatures had burrowed from the earth near the dims. They were laying waste to the town, which was thankfully less sparsely populated now that most of the little pikeys had departed with Voria.
Then the beetles reached the tree, and began to burrow. The magically dense wood proved little barrier, and the black carapaces disappeared inside the holy tree. There could be only one destination, as Teodros no doubt intended him to know.
It left him in an impossible position. If he stayed here to battle Teodros, those beetles would reach the pool and drink it dry. If he left to respond to them, then Teodros would quickly finish his fleet, and come for the pool anyway.
Not far below him, a Wyrm grappled the Eternal Branch, savaging the hull with the claws on all four limbs. The ship responded with a burst of golden light, drawing a shriek from the animated Wyrm. When the energy passed, the binding had been severed, and the now limp corpse plummeted from the sky. The ship righted itself, and began coming around for a pass at another Wyrm.
“Blast it. What do you want from me?” He looked down at Shaya. “What is the right answer?”
In the end there was only one choice. If he faced Teodros inside the tree, then the Wyrm would have no choice but to face him in human form. That would make it a contest of sorcery, rather than a physical confrontation. It meant that most of his fleet would be destroyed and his mages slain. But if it saved the mother, that was all that mattered.
He began sketching the teleport spell, forcing himself to watch the Wyrms annihilate his fleet as he fled.
46
Last Stand
Aran peered through the command bunker door toward the lift at the end of the corridor. Halogen lights flickered, making shadows dance. Everything was quiet, as it had been for the past twenty-four hours. Arkelion had made no move to probe their defenses.
“Captain?” Hernandez asked from behind him.
He shifted to face the Marine, but kept his spellrifle aimed at the doorway. “Hey, Hernandez, what’s up?”
“I brought you one of our sidearms.” Hernandez extended a pistol, grip first.
Aran propped his spellrifle against the wall, and blinked when a wave of empathic indignation washed over him. It seemed to be focused on the pistol. Did his spellrifle not want him to have it? Was it jealous? It wasn’t as advanced as Narlifex, but maybe it was time he started treating it the same way. He’d never had a pet that he could remember. Looked like now he had two.
“Thanks.” Aran accepted the weapon and took a moment to inspect it. The heavy pistol had a simple trigger with a guard, and his armor just barely allowed him to get a finger inside of it. A magazine had already been inserted in the clip, and contained six purple rounds that he could see through a slit on the grip. “What do I need to know about it?”
“The rounds will detonate on impact, so don’t fire at anything closer than two meters.” She raised a hand to stifle a yawn. “Other than that it should work just like your spellpistols. Hopefully you won’t need it.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get.” Aran opened his void pocket and slipped the pistol inside, then picked up his spellrifle. It pulsed relief, but still seemed irritated about the pistol.
“Hey, Cap.” Crewes came trotting over. “Chronometer’s got two minutes until the twenty-four hour mark. You wanted to be informed.”
“Thanks, Crewes.” Aran nodded gratefully. “Hernandez, if you and your Marines can hold this doorway, that frees my people up to push the hallway without needing to hold back on big spells.”
“Do you really think we dealt with all the wights?” Hernandez asked. She glanced nervously at the nearest air duct. “If they get in here and we don’t have you to protect us…”
“I’m sure,” Aran replied confidently. “Existing creatures, like most of the megafauna on this world, can be bound instantly and then sent into combat. A creature like a wight requires a ritual to create, and that requires time. Kheross can probably explain the process.”
The white-haired Wyrm lounged against a nearby wall, doing his best imitation of feline boredom. “You are correct. The army we destroyed represents countless magical hours. It will take months to raise a similar army.”
“Any thoughts on what we might face today then?” Aran leaned around the corner to peer at the lift again, but it was still empty and he felt nothing approaching.
Kheross uncrossed his arms and moved to stand next to Aran. He peered down the corridor as well, and his eyes took on the far away look of memory. “A binder of that strength has two choices. They can send endless waves of cheap fodder, or they can gather their remaining minions and push with everything they have. Given the age of our assailant, I suspect he will choose the latter. He’s going to come at us with every creature he still has bound—his reserves and a personal bodyguard if he has them.”
“At least it ain’t gonna be more wights.” Crewes sounded genuinely relieved. “Those witches make my skin crawl. I hate that depths-damned laugh.”
“Excuse me.” Tharn floated over in her silvered spellarmor. “Would you mind giving that speech one more time, Kheross? I’d like to get a better angle on your face.”
“What?” Kheros
s blinked at her, and then his face twisted into a feral version of itself. “Do you lack any understanding of our present circumstances? We face annihilation, woman. And you want to take pictures? Go away, or I will ease my boredom cracking your bones.”
“Quiet, both of you,” Aran snapped. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted through the scope. “I feel something approaching. Get into positions, people. Tharn, you can record whatever you want, but stay out of the way and don’t leave this room—only your drones, got it?”
“I make no promises.” Tharn’s tone was hesitant, but Aran didn’t have time to investigate.
“Corporal Kezia.” Aran swiveled the rifle across the bottom of the lift, but didn’t see anything yet. A great deal of void magic was approaching.
Kezia trotted up in her heavy armor, each step booming on the metal floor. Aran sized her up approvingly. “If Tharn leaves this room your primarily responsibility is shoving her right back inside.”
“Yes, sir,” Kezia said cheerfully. “I’ll see that she keeps a proper distance.”
“Incoming,” Aran barked as a figure dropped into sight near the center of the lift.
He studied it in the scope for just a moment, noting that it was a three-meter-tall demon not unlike those in the last wave. This one, however, wore a spellblade. Horns curved from her forehead, but if not for that and the ebony skin she’d have passed for your average Shayan. She was certainly less bestial than any demon he’d yet seen.
Three more demons landed next to the first, also wearing spellblades, and also female. All four moved with the kind of coordination that Aran recognized. He recognized it, because he shared that same coordination with his own squad.
