Danine looked up from the magical strength exercise to see one of Tim's friends running along the roofs. Hrm, Amra, yes that was his name.
"Danine!" he shouted across the alley gap, right before jumping across, "look at this!"
She kept the large ball of unformed magic hanging above her palm and just nodded at him to continue. The strain on her magic was already making her feel sleepy but she could hear him out. Danine hoped she wouldn't suddenly fall asleep mid-conversation.
"See what I found!" Amra held out a fist.
Danine stared at it stupidly for a few seconds before realizing what was strange. His fist had magic inside it.
That wasn't an exercise she was taught nor read in Landar's book on magic. Magic always existed outside of people's bodies, you couldn't push magic into people because you hit their lifeforce first. The book was pretty clear on that.
So how was it that Amra had a bit of magic inside him? Danine put away her training exercise and looked more closely, trying to figure out the structure.
She couldn't do it, the structure was ridiculously complicated, more than even the large gem Landar had shown her on the way to Corbin. And it wasn't like normal structure, the magic flowed and divided and subdivided in a disturbingly organic fashion, unlike the rigid lines and forces that Landar's exercises taught. How could Amra even use magic so complicated when no one, not even Danine, had managed to do much more than launch the simplest crudest magical bolt? Magic more complicated than even a Summoning Stone itself?
All Danine managed to get from it was that the magic was blue.
"What is that?" Danine whispered, wanting nothing more than to know where he learnt that from.
"I already figured out what it does," Amra said, opening his fist and taking her hand. His hand was cold to the touch, a chill that abruptly stopped halfway up his wrist. A chill that spread to her hands solely because he was holding hers, not like sticking her hands into a chilling spell.
She explored the magic for a while then nodded at Amra, "you can turn it off now. "
His expression seemed to relax and Amra shook some life into his cold hand. The Fuka boy grinned at her and took her hand in his still clammy fingers, "please don't tell the others I can do this, I want to keep it a secret. "
Danine was too surprised to take her hand back and just blinked at him, "why not?"
"I can teach you how to do it, I'm sure we'll find it useful," he stood a bit closer, "it can be our secret. A special ability just for us two. "
Danine raised an eyebrow. That made no sense, she had gathered the Fuka children to form a... to defend each other. What was the point of keeping this interesting discovery a secret?
She said as much.
Amra looked closely at her, still holding her hands, then he sighed dramatically, "all right, if you say so. " He only made her even more confused by letting go of her hands then sitting down on the roof and looking out over the town.
Why was he disappointed? Danine couldn't quite figure out what was going on. Amra looked like he might even be sulking! Over her not wanting to keep a secret that wasn't a secret!
"What's wrong?" she asked, feeling a little concerned at his weird behaviour. Amra had always been rather distant at their gang meetings, er, training sessions. While he turned up for every single one, he always kept quiet and never talked to the others. Now he was being unusually touchy.
He just shook his head then sighed again.
Danine decided right then that she couldn't be bothered dealing with this when there was a tantalizing piece of magic dangling in front of her, waiting to be learnt. He would probably recover from his funk or whatever spurred on this bout of unusualness.
"So, how does it work?" Danine asked, sitting down beside him.
Amra looked confused, then flustered. Then after a long moment of staring at her strangely, he held out his hand again. The magic spread across it, shifting under his skin at a lower power.
"You know how you taught us magic?" Amra started, "you said to extend a part of ourselves out of the body to where we wanted the magic to appear. "
His strange magic disappeared. She could tell he was concentrating but there was nothing appearing. "Then we do something like this. " They didn't have the words to describe what was going on, but Danine knew the process. It was a bit like flexing a muscle, only they did it where they wanted the magic to appear. The harder you did so, the more power you used and the more magic appeared. With practice, you increased your pool of magic, the total magical strength you could exert at any one time and your control over the magic.
Amra followed the exercise and a small blob of magic rotated in the air above his palm. "The thing is, the magic here in this ball is just a thing. We have to... push it around, like we are holding a real ball. The hard part was making them structured. Or coloured as we see it. "
Danine nodded.
"So I thought, what if instead of making the ball appear then changing its colours, we just... make the colours. I couldn't do that, but what happened was this," Amra waved the ball of magic away then replaced it with the same pulsing lines of complexity Danine had saw.
"It wasn't what I wanted but it was interesting so I practiced making it appear, just to be sure. I think it's not a mistake, it's a magic that we can use," Amra said.
Danine frowned and tried Amra's idea. Extending her magic was almost easy now, but trying to purify the colour without any magic to purify? That was something she hadn't managed to do.
A flash of red appeared in her hand, a tiny spark of magic. Danine blinked in surprise. She concentrated again and the red appeared once more, solidifying as she grasped the concept. It really was like suddenly noticing a third arm she had always had.
Danine blinked and looked up at Amra. "It's that easy?" she asked, getting a nod from him.
"I only noticed this yesterday," Amra said.
A pulse of magic lines was moving inside her hand in time with her focus. Now that she could make the magic appear to her magic sense, she noticed that it moved under her skin to wherever she was extending her magic, in the same way she did when she was trying to cast a spell. She pushed more magic down the complex mesh of magic, wondering how far her control extended with this new application.
Her hand stung and then she was hopping around, trying to wave the heat away from her hand. Ow! It was like putting her hand into a fire!
Some minutes of panic later, Danine flexed her sore fingers in wonder, a cool blue glow of magic inside it taking away the burning heat like a welcome splash of water.
"This is incredible," she said, grinning at Amra, "it's so easy! I don't even have to practice to get this!" She demonstrated by moving the magic up her arm and around her neck, then down to her feet. Faster and more fluid than she could manage any sort of spell.
"Do you know what it is?" Amra asked.
"Landar's book didn't say, nor did she mention it," Danine said.
"So I discovered something the humans don't know?" Amra asked in disbelief.
"Maybe," Danine's grin got wider, "we'll get to give Cato a surprise then! If the basic functions work the same way, then I can think of some things right away!"
She flipped the colour to a solid green on her hand and immediately felt her hand become slow and heavy. The Resist magic nailed her hand to the air, making all movement difficult, even falling. Yep, exactly the same. Danine poked at her hand curiously with the other.
She blinked then turned to Amra, a wondrous feeling bubbling up inside her. "I think this is the key," Danine said, "your discovery will let us handle the Red Water gang. "
"What?!" Amra said, shocked at her sudden statement.
"Take my hand," she said, expression becoming serious. Danine pushed her magic down to her hand again and he reached out, putting one hand above hers. Then he jerked away in surprise.
Her skin was as hard as rock.
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"How's the evacuation?" Morey asked, putting down the two steel staves on the ground.
Ereli didn't raise her head from the table. She just murmured a negative.
"That bad huh?" Morey looked around the tavern. One would not have thought this was a village in the path of a huge army of zombies, judging by the crowds of people crammed into the tavern gawking at him. Every seat was full, except for the Hero table, which was right in the middle and permanently reserved for their use.
Honestly, he was starting to get sick of this worship. The Hero's table, the Hero's room, the Hero's... Morey looked down at the plates they doubled as paperweights for the map. Hero's cutlery? Surely not... right?
"They don't want to move," Ereli explained, "they think the Hero will save them. "
"The zombies will get here a day before the nearest army unit!" Morey cried, "surely, anyone can understand that five people can't hold off an army? "
Ereli gestured at the people surrounding them. They surely hadn't missed what Morey was saying but no one seemed to be surprised.
"No one wants to move because they think we can hold off the zombies," Ereli said, her voice flat and exhausted, "you are the Hero, of course the Hero will win. It will be a glorious battle, perhaps a good time to have a picnic. "
Morey picked his jaw off the table and rubbed his eyes. He should have expected this. There had been all the signs of Hero worship since he arrived, they even tried to lay out a red carpet using flower petals. When the nobles wanted to know how Earth treated its nobles, Morey should have just shut up. He had spent nearly an hour talking the villagers out of it.
Despite that, there were still no decent toilets. Heroes using the toilet was not part of the image.
"Try harder," was all Morey could say. And nodding futilely was all Ereli could do.
"So what about the defence?" Ereli asked finally, "should I come help?"
"Can you even help?" Morey asked bluntly. Ereli hung her head sadly, "but I still want to..."
"You're helping enough just by filling these," Morey reassured her by indicating the two steel staves he had put down next to the table. Spending the cost of steel for two long rods the height of a person was a waste, but steel could contain a bit more magic than iron per weight, so the staves could be smaller and lighter. As it was, the two hollow staves were already half Ereli's weight. Morey had to constantly remind himself that Ereli was tougher than she appeared.
"But that's just a strength exercise," Ereli complained, "all I do is fill these with magic every day!"
"And that helps us go much faster," Morey said, "we completed two rows today. It would not be possible without this huge boon of magic you give us every day. "
"But still-"
"You'll get your chance to help when the zombies come," Morey said, "we'll be relying on Grand Cross to deal most of the damage. "
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Most didn't mean all however. Over the next week, the villagers became increasingly curious as to what the Heroes were doing on the nearby hill. For all they knew, it looked like the Heroes were planting magic items in the ground like crops.
The alchemist Locoss would draw off a sliver of magic from the steel staff and pack it into a pebble. Then Nal would bury it. Then they moved on to the next spot in the row. Meanwhile, Etani would examine the freshly buried pebble and wave some flags to Morey, who was standing in a big open field of wind eyes. Morey would then pace up and down until Etani waved for him to stop and then he would plant a stick into the ground. And thus the field began to slowly fill with sticks sporting little coloured pieces of cloth.
From Etani's perspective however, the pebbles were the size of human heads and each time, Locoss would enchant the rock to a pre-agreed magical power level then set it firmly into the hole dug to hold the rock and a clay bowl of water securely. Then Etani would take the curious metal device Morey had given her, called a slide rule, and would sight along the direction the spell would fling the rock and then get Morey to move to where the device said he should be.
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What the entire charade was for, Morey hadn't explained fully, but she was given to believe that the enchantments on the rocks would shoot them to approximately where Morey was planting his flags.
This was apparently something that his world had done before and after a few experiments on rock flinging, Morey had come up with that slide rule.
Locoss buried the last rock and nodded at her. After Morey had marked another position, Etani raised the black cloth to signal the day was over.
"Do you think it's enough?" she asked Morey as he came up to her to survey the work.
"The hunters are saying we still have another day before that field gets crushed by tens of thousands of feet," Morey said gesturing at the widely spaced flags waving among the wind eyes. "I think that's enough layers," Morey added, "it better be. "
At least Nal was doing something they were sure would work. This rock flinging exercise was something that had never been done before and Locoss was left scurrying around trying to fulfill Morey's orders on making magical enchantments with exactly the same amount of power. The poor girl had tried her best, even practicing her art over and over into magical exhaustion without a word of complaint.
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The five people standing on the crest of the hill was a pitiful force, but one wouldn't have noticed it from the makeshift banners and cheering that came from the village's walls. Despite his best efforts, Morey hadn't been able to make the villagers evacuate short of using force. And now the zombies were here and they simply had to defend the village.
"Why won't they understand?" Morey complained.
"I must still disapprove of this battle plan," Etani said, "noble or heroic doesn't help you if you're dead. We should run if the zombies become too overwhelming. "
"But then all the people will die! "
"They didn't listen when we said we couldn't protect them," Etani replied, a tinge of frost in her voice, "as much as I would like to end this war without dead people, I am afraid that is already impossible now. You shouldn't throw away your life protecting these villagers, the Hero is worth more to Inath than a few hundred peasants. "
Morey wanted to reply but Etani's assessment was correct. Cold, but correct. These four girls had been presented to him as Inath's best mages in each area of magic, they were practically indispensable for the war effort. Morey couldn't honestly count himself as necessary, but to lose these four would be like losing an entire company of soldiers. Not that Inath had a professional army with organized units.
When Locoss joined, Morey had suddenly realized that all four were girls around his age, even if Nal looked doubtful. And they pretty too. That was just a tad suspicious. But their skill was real and the five of them had a combat performance that was among the best adventuring parties.
But there was something morally wrong about running away and saving yourself when the entire village was going to be slaughtered. Morey's decision to intervene when they intercepted the messenger had been strongly protested by Nal and Etani but his position as the Hero was quite useful in these matters.
There was movement at the horizon, a thin black line appeared above the gently rolling hills. The Enemy was here.
And the host of zombies grew and grew, seemingly without end. An endless black tide of misshapen bodies and patchwork abominations that pounded the grassland into brown dirt.
The movement of the zombies was predictable, they headed for the village straight as an arrow. And they ran into the first set of defenses.
With great roars and flashes, the ground itself seemed to reach up and swallow them, tossing broken bodies into the air to land as a rain of tortured flesh and soil. The huge boulders Ereli had filled with magic and that Locoss had turned into explosive bombs were now making their mark once the army of zombies reached it. Once any erosion of magic occurred from the dark magic around the zombies, or the rocks were touched by the zombies, the enchantment dumped its entire power into the rock, shattering it and sending fragments scything outwards in all directions to mow down zombies like wind eyes under a blade.
The zombies didn't care, they simply marched on, absorbing the losses. The black tide was not even stemmed in the slightest, the shattered zombies simply pieced themselves back together and marched on. The zombie magic came into sensing range, even at this extreme distance. It loomed like a dark cloud, diffuse and wispy but no less immense for its sheer size.
Then as the front line touched the edges of the cultivated fields, Morey launched his main defense. The red flags were the outermost and at the longest range. He waited until the front had went past it until they almost touched the second yellow line before nodding to Locoss.
Locoss nodded back and bent down to touch the thin red thread connecting the rocks. As one, the rocks launched themselves off the ground into the air towards the zombies with huge bangs and cracks. The ground churned upwards under the explosions of superheated steam as the enchantment in the rocks dumped their heat. Morey was quite sure that heat magic was more efficient than movement magic, judging by how easy it was to heat water.
The near-simultaneous explosion made them all jump a little. Even battle hardened Etani flinched at the wall of sound and the sounds of cheering from the village wall behind them was stilled. A steam explosion from a single rock was one thing but to have fifty go off all at once was quite another.
The accuracy wasn't quite what he had hoped for, but by now the zombies had overtaken the expected kill zone they had taken two weeks to refine and prepare. The rocks tumbled downwards like cannonballs then, right on at the set time, the same movement magic used in the boulder mines shattered them into a cone of shrapnel that shredded bodies and shattered bone. Huge circular holes appeared in the formation, there would be no reanimating those zombies.
Some rocks had exploded early, their shards spread across too wide an area to generate sure kills. And some never exploded at all, smashing a few zombies into pulp but leaving those to either side untouched. This level of success would only have been possible with Locoss's skill in alchemy though and for a while it seemed like the tide could be held back. The cheering started again once the rolling thunderclaps of exploding rock had quieted down.
The advanced faltered as the zombies in front halted, waiting for those behind to catch up. Then, as one, they moved again, a clear line of the dead marching forward as if at a drill parade. The feeling of their magic was buzzing higher and higher, but Morey put it out of his mind. They had crossed the second yellow line far enough. He nodded at Locoss again.
Etani's hand creaked on her warhammer as another line of holes appeared in the formation, more accurately this time. The second line had been used and while hundreds upon hundreds of zombies had been mashed like so much rotten fruit, there were still countless thousands. The third and last line tore savagely into the densely packed formation, the holes now overlapping into zones of total destruction.
It was clearly not enough. The zombies were visibly thinned, but there was still a huge army. From the start, it was pointless to have them fight the entire army by themselves. A good quarter of the zombies had already been felled, an achievement that was already legendary for a small band of five, but that put them in reach of the remaining thousands.
And there was still the village behind them.
As the cheers turned into a scramble, Morey turned to Ereli. She was standing in the middle of four steel staffs that had been planted end down into the ground, surrounded by so much stored magical power than the very air seemed to hum in her presence.
"Your turn," he said simply, "but save your own magic. We will probably need Blade Wall once the zombies reach us. "
Ereli nodded and held up the summoning stone that was also the pride of the Iris family. Magic wafted up from the four staves and gathered into the familiar formation above her. The magical glow swelled in defiance of the zombies' magic but it was clear which was bigger.
Grand Cross slammed down, squashing zombies with its downdraft and smashing through the thinner cloud of the zombies' dark magic. They watched as the rotating cross moved across the formation, leaving broken bodies and gaping holes in the magic behind it. Then the glow faded and was finally consumed by the tide of dark magic, leaving Ereli with only four dead sticks of steel.
"Did you see that?" Nal said.
Locoss simply nodded, to Morey's confusion. "See what?" he asked.
"The zombies. When Grand Cross touched them, they fell down immediately," Nal said.
"Well of course, that's what Grand Cross does," Ereli said, "it flattens everything. "
"No, I mean before that," Nal pointed at the hole that was closing up again, "some of the zombies, the ones outside the force area, some of them just fell over. Doesn't Grand Cross have a magical disruption field larger than its force field?"
"It does, but-"
"The zombies fell down even without the force!" Nal said excitedly.
"Warning," Locoss interrupted and pointed at the zombies.
"What?" Morey looked again. Something glinted off the front ranks of the zombies.
They all looked closer. "Is there some sort of crystal on them?" Etani remarked.
"I wonder where they got it?" Morey said, "or what it does. "
That wasn't the only surprise. A small glow appeared in the middle of the formation once the zombies had gotten close enough. They had only a second to wonder about it when there was a flash of air and a clap of superheated air. A bright beam of light connected the glow to a patch of soil in their direction and disappeared in a blink of an eye. A puff of glassy soil was thrown up, like someone throwing a pebble.
"What was that?" Morey said once they had all hurriedly dived to the ground behind the hill.
"Light attack," Locoss said, frowning worriedly.
"What does that mean?" Nal asked.
Another puff of soil at the top edge of the hill in another flash.
"Concentrated light. " While her reticence was famous, at times like this, Morey felt like strangling her. Of course, that only made her even more unwilling to talk.
"I've heard of things like this," Nal said, they turned to her. "I once read about a famous philosopher, dating from the Migration Age after the collapse of the First. He wrote that light was the same thing as heat, that it just travels further. "
Morey smacked his forehead, so this was like one of those science fiction laser beams. Only it didn't fly around, it behaved more like light would, being instant. That was much more dangerous.
"Source is crystal monster," Locoss finally deigned to elaborate, "saw one. Not zombie. All crystal. "
"We saw crystal too, on the zombies," Nal said, "I wonder if they're the same thing. "
A shower of fused dirt came over the top of the hill again. "Leave it for later!" Etani said, "we have bigger issues to worry about. Like how to survive the next hour. "
Then they felt it, the tramping of countless feet was now close enough to start making the ground hop and vibrate.
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Side: Morey continues next week. It might even qualify as a mini-arc...