by Demi Harper
Now that the majority of enemies were trapped inside the barricade, my denizens risked crossing the open space away from the conflict, moving in the color groups they’d been assigned at the start of the exodus. They were guarded by an unarmored but spear-wielding militia—workers who had previously held the warrior vocation, I realized.
As soon as the last of the non-combatants left the circle, the warriors altered their formation, assembling into a protective tortoise and heading toward the chariot. The dire badger with a face full of shrapnel was harrying it fiercely; it had already managed to pull the spear away from one of the acolytes and was now snapping at the platform on which they stood.
I sought out Binky, thinking to use Spit again to help them out. Then I saw something that, if I’d had blood, would have made it run cold.
A gnome girl—the same blond child who’d been dancing obliviously before being kidnapped by the owl—was standing in front of the hut on the opposite side.
How the hells did she get out of the circle?!
Her small, slender form was dwarfed by the structure; her eyes were closed, and she was singing, swaying from side to side with every word. Once again she seemed completely unaware of the danger she was in.
The lone dire badger still on the outside of the barricade had up until now been throwing itself futilely against the still-standing wagons. Perhaps it was on a different frequency to the others, or maybe it just wanted to do its own thing, but thus far it had been causing minimal damage.
When it caught sight of the girl, though, it snorted excitedly and made a beeline straight toward her.
A large shape on the portahut’s roof moved. Binky was pressed flat against the thatch so he couldn’t be seen by the enemies below, but at my urgent signal, he leapt down to grab the girl, dangling in the air and then reeling them both back up to the roof.
Just in time. The charging badger passed barely an inch beneath her dangling feet. She squealed in triumph and punched the air, apparently exhilarated to have escaped harm yet again and uncaring that she was now suspended in the furry ‘arms’ of a giant venomous spider.
Unable to stop itself, the dire badger skidded through the portahut’s entrance and crashed straight into the supports. The entire structure wobbled.
Move! I commanded.
Binky immediately leaped down onto the nearest wagon, prompting another squeal of delight from his fair-haired gnomish burden. The hut collapsed behind them, trapping the badger beneath a pile of thatch, hides and sticks. Flea, who’d apparently gotten bored of his own guard duties, came snuffling around the edge of the barricade just in time to see the structure fall. He dived on top of it, snarling and squealing, using his own weight to stop the dire badger from bursting free.
My gaze lingered on the collapsed hut, an idea forming in the back of my mind.
I know what we have to do.
The melee warriors all encircled the chariot now. It was an island of safety among a sea of badgers, and Gneil was stuck right in the middle of it. For this task, though, I needed neither my warriors nor my high cleric. There were just two gnomes who could do what was needed. And I knew exactly where I’d find them.
“What do you have in mind?” asked Ket, suspicious of my sudden surge of enthusiasm.
“You’ll see.”
Emrys was leading the non-combatants who’d escaped the circle toward the shelter of Coll’s tent, out beyond the edges of the skynet. I zoomed ahead of them where, inside the tent itself, a pair of gnomes had already made themselves at home. Swift and Cheer had clearly been in there the entire time, and were happily rummaging through the humans’ belongings as though nothing was amiss outside.
Whenever I’d tried to command them in the past, they’d complied only reluctantly, and completed whatever task I’d set them with the barest minimum of interest. Now, though, matching grins split their faces when I selected an ability from their Augmentary menu and pointed them back in the direction of the main camp.
The two scavengers pushed their way outside, heedless of the line of denizens streaming in from the opposite direction. They headed straight for the nearest skynet support.
A shriek came from the fallen tent. Thatch erupted everywhere as the dire badger burst free, flinging poor Flea against the barricade and shaking itself off vigorously. Its cloudy eyes gleamed as it spotted Swift and Cheer moving toward the next support pole.
“We need to distract it!” Ket wrung her hands, sparks showering from her wings as she flitted from side to side in distress.
“Already on it,” I told her.
As Swift and Cheer continued to move around the outskirts of the camp, I focused on Binky.
Spit! I commanded.
The missile hit its mark. The dire badger shrieked in either pain or rage; as a species, they were internally resistant to most toxins, but that didn’t prevent its fur and skin from sizzling beneath the venom. It turned its full attention onto Binky, then charged the spider. Just as I’d hoped it would.
Run!
Binky scuttled away, leading the badger on a merry chase through the trees—and most importantly, away from Swift and Cheer. What I hadn’t realized was that the blond-haired child had attached herself to her eight-legged rescuer. She clung to Binky’s furry back as he scuttled ahead of the dire badger; her hair streamed wildly in the wind, and she screamed in what should have been terror but sounded suspiciously like delight.
There was a creak of wood, and the already crooked skynet lurched even further askew. Swift and Cheer were almost done.
All right, Binky, come back!
He hadn’t gone far; Binky might be growing more independent the more terrestrial he became, but he couldn’t yet leave the boundary of my SOI.
As the spider led the rogue dire badger back into the camp, Swift and Cheer sprung the trap.
The skynet dropped.
Unlike when the builders would dismantle it at the start of each day’s march, there was no careful folding of the webbing or retracting of the supports. Instead the entire structure came crashing down. The support posts toppled inward, some of them splintering against the wagon barricade as they fell. Luckily the slingers still standing on the wagons had been alerted by Cheer, who’d let out a victorious cry as she sabotaged the final post; they all managed to duck safely against their wagons’ outer edges.
No longer held taut by the supports, the sticky web that gave the skynet its name was now draped over the entire area, trapping everything beneath it. The instant it fell, I sent Binky in; the arachnid danced nimbly across the net, cutting free the warriors and acolytes at the center and ensuring the dire badgers were properly bound. He moved quickly, heedless of the wild-haired child perched calmly on his thorax like she’d been riding giant spiders her entire life.
The enemy dire badgers thrashed wildly against their bonds. How are they still fighting?! It was almost as though they didn’t feel the pain of their wounds. Two of them had venom burns from Binky’s Spit attack; all had suffered numerous nasty cuts and scrapes from either badger claws or gnomish weapons; and the one that had led the initial charge was still bleeding copiously from the shrapnel wounds in its face. Yet still they bit and clawed, snapped and snarled, even as their sticky bindings rubbed painfully against their fur and flesh.
Suddenly, all five of them fell quiet. Their struggles stilled. At the exact same moment I received a flash of emotion—relief, as well as triumph—from Ris’kin. The dire badger queen was finally defeated.
A soft whimper rose from the fallen skynet. The dire badger with the bloody face mewled pathetically, attempting to curl up into a ball but prevented from doing so by the sticky webbing. Gneil was already making his way toward it, wielding a cloth and a waterskin, but its fellows began a pained chorus of their own, all five of the wounded animals squirming and whining.
“Ket,” I murmured to my shell-shocked sprite, “what in all the hells just happened?”
Thirty-Eight
Not Crying
Benin
New ability acquired: Levitate
Levitate
(Evocation ability)
Balance the forces of air and fire, producing a ‘cushion’ of extreme thermal energy that allows the caster to levitate.
Cost: 10 mana per second
Benin found himself laughing uncontrollably as he fought for balance.
Who would’ve thought a pyromancer would be able to master levitation? They don’t teach that shit in the Guild.
He hovered almost a meter above the forest floor, the air beneath him shimmering with heat haze. The ground in the clearing below was blackened and smoking from all his previous failed attempts.
The air was a strange beast; it almost felt like trying to stand on a constantly tilting surface that was covered in ice. The concentration required to maintain it for more than a few seconds was—
“Argh!”
His arms windmilled as he lost his balance. Though momentary, the distraction made him lose his hold on his mana, cutting off the supply needed to maintain the spell. The treacherous ‘cushion’ that had kept him afloat dissipated, and Benin dropped to the ground, landing hard amid a pile of singed leaves.
Despite the slip-up, this only made him laugh harder. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed this much. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d laughed at all. It felt good.
“It lacks elegance, admittedly,” sniffed Bekkit. “But if it practices, one day it may soar through the skies like one of the greats.”
“When that day comes, will you finally stop referring to me as ‘it’?”
As expected, the strange little being deigned not to reply. For once Benin didn’t mind. He could handle a little disrespect in exchange for the sprite sharing its knowledge, especially if he continued gaining new spells as a result.
His excitement at mastering Levitate after just a couple hours’ practice began to fade when he pictured the others’ less-than-enthusiastic reactions.
He didn’t need them lecturing him on the impracticalities of practicing fire magic in the middle of a forest. He was more than aware, but it’s not like he had a choice. They were leagues from civilization, and he actually had an instructor who knew about pyromancy. He and Bekkit were to be ’brothers in fire’, according to the sprite. Despite its current attitude of disrespect, this was an opportunity he’d be a fool to pass up.
Spending time alone with the sprite had also yielded some rather interesting conversations.
“Back in my day they called me the Calamity,” he was saying now.
“You mentioned that once or twice.” Eight or nine times.
“I rained fire from the skies. Turned armies into ash.”
“Sounds impressive.” Benin tried not to let his skepticism show. He suspected the tiny creature was full of wind, but didn’t want to risk disrespecting the only person who had the potential to actually teach him something useful.
“I could have razed this entire forest in the blink of an eye. It could too.” The sprite sighed wistfully as he pondered the clearing. “Though given our allies’ presence in the vicinity, I suppose it is a good thing we did not.”
The only reason for that was Pyra. The emberfox had such mastery of her element that she could absorb fire as well as produce it, manipulating the very air to smother flames as easily as stoke them.
Why am I surprised? Of course she can do that. She’s an elemental creature—she’s literally of fire. Of course she can do whatever she wants with it.
Bekkit watched her too. “I have a question, if you will. Mages are usually accustomed to select an arcane companion of their paired element—in your case, air—or, very rarely, of an opposing one. Yet you chose to match your fire with yet more flame.”
There was a short pause. “You said you had a question?” Benin prompted, somewhat irritably.
“Why?”
“I…”
Why had he chosen the emberfox? It definitely hadn’t been what he’d had in mind when he entered the Menagerie.
“I saw her, and it just felt… right. When I first came close to her, I thought we’d bonded. We had this moment… but it turns out I was wrong.”
Tears stung his eyes. He blinked furiously. On the other side of the clearing, the emberfox twitched her tail in annoyance. It was something she always did when she sensed him spiraling into self-pity. It seemed the little creature had no empathy.
“I saved you!” he burst out. “Will you just quit your sulking and let us work as a gods-damned team?”
It turned to glare at him. He tried to swallow his frustration. He held out a placating hand and added more gently, “Please?”
The emberfox seemed to consider this. After a moment it trotted over, halting a few steps away and peering suspiciously at Benin’s outstretched fingers. It edged closer. He could feel the heat of its aura as its nose came closer, almost enough to touch…
Its whiskers brushed his palm. An instant later the skin they’d touched began to bubble and blister. Searing pain rushed up his arm and Benin cried out, snatching his hand back and cradling it against his chest.
He tried to glare at Pyra, but everything was blurry.
“Are you crying?” Bekkit alighted on his shoulder.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not crying! It’s just been… raining.”
The sprite squinted up at the sky, clear blue beyond the branches, then back at Benin. “On your face?”
The mage wiped a sleeve angrily across his eyes.
“You should bond soon, or seek out another,” Bekkit told him gravely. “As I’m sure you’re aware, familiars have vastly larger mana pools than most mages. You’ll need to draw on that, along with their other benefits, if you’re to maintain spells like Levitate for any reasonable amount of time.”
He wasn’t wrong. Benin had managed to keep the spell active for a mere handful of seconds, yet even that had taken a good chunk of his available mana.
“I rescued her from the Menagerie,” he found himself saying. “I thought she’d be grateful, but she seems to hate me. She’ll follow me around, but whenever I try to go near her she snaps at me. I don’t understand what she wants.” All the elation he’d felt at mastering his new spell was gone. The gray cloak of despair had returned.
“’Tis a noble and difficult goal, figuring out where one stands. One can spend their entire life on this world certain of their place within it, only to one day have it all pulled out from beneath them. The important thing is to keep seeking not only where one stands, but where one ought to stand.”
Benin eyed the tiny speck, barely visible on his shoulder. “Ket’s right. You really are a cryptic turd.”
“The universe works in mysterious ways,” the sprite replied.
Was that… a joke?
Benin crossed his arms. “You weren’t referring to yourself at all just now? All that stuff about not knowing where you stand?”
“What does it mean?”
“Well, since you emerged from that necklace like some sort of deranged djinn, you’ve been doing your best to help Corey. Yet one moment he’s taking your advice, and the next he’s telling you to shut up. Must be pretty frustrating, especially since you’re stuck with him.”
“For now,” he thought he heard the sprite mutter.
“I guess he would be suspicious, though,” Benin mused. “You did arrive at an… interesting time.”
“I was an amulet. I had no control over scheduling.”
“How did you get to be trapped in there, anyway?”
Bekkit surprised him by laughing bitterly. “I put my trust in the wrong person.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“A god. Forgotten to most, worshiped by just enough to still exist.”
“And the name of this god is…?”
“You wouldn’t know him. His followers call him the Lord of Light.”
“How very bland.”
“Isn’t
it? ‘Tis also a misnomer. This being is a deity of deceit and death. As I learned to my ultimate misfortune.”
“Seems you’ve made a lot of enemies in your time. Even Ket hates you, and she seems to like everyone.”
“Alas, young Ketten has every right to despise me.” He gave another heavy sigh. Benin had to fight not to roll his eyes at the sprite’s melodrama, and instead just waited, knowing from experience that Bekkit would not pass up an opportunity to talk more about himself.
“As you know,” he continued after a moment, “I too was reborn as a God Core. My denizens were dragonkin, who regrettably came to feud with first Ketten, then Corey.”
“You mean the kobolds?”
“If it prefers.”
“But if you were a Core, how come you’re a sprite?”
“The universe works in mysterious ways—”
“I don’t mean literally how. I just mean, why did that come about?”
“If it would let me finish… the universe is apparently a great believer in second chances. When a Core fails, they are offered a chance to redeem themselves by serving as the next Core’s sprite.”
“Huh. So Ket was the god of gnomes before Corey arrived?”
“Correct.”
“And Grimrock took her gnomes for sacrifice? Then shattered her gem?”
“Well… she shattered her own gem in a misguided attempt to seek more information on her enemy. She over-exerted herself; her mana reserves ran dry. With nothing left to sustain her, she shattered.”
Benin shuddered. Every mage had received the lectures, heard the horror stories about what would happen were they to expend too much mana at once. It was one of the reasons pyromancy was so dangerous. The most unpredictable element could behave in strange ways, and a volatile spell could drain a caster dry in moments.
