Having grown up with a rather poor immune system and a healthy diet of fiction and fantasy, it only seemed a foregone conclusion that Liam would dream of becoming a writer one day. It had been a goal he’d set for himself since early in his life, and one he slowly worked his way towards. Allowance money went only ever to books and writing supplies for him to fill out. His teens brought an improvement to his health, but also the discovery of the internet and text files. It was roughly at this point in time that his world-building “eternal time sink” hobby of writing about the world of “Crystal Skylights” truly began.
Now finding himself half-crouched on the street of Al-Zahra, a knife against his chest, and staring up into the smoked glass covering the stranger’s eyes, Liam idly wondered if his situation would be any different if he had spent some of that idle time learning self-defense.
Probably not.
“You want this, right? Here you go.” He carefully raised the doughy sphere of aether, offering it back to the stranger. They were surprisingly light despite being draped in brown cloths from head to toe.
There was nothing recognizable about them, other than the sudden urgency to snatch it out of his grip and hide it. Liam just grimaced inwardly; he could understand where they were coming from— aether was extremely expensive; a golf ball-sized lump was worth his bodyweight in gold. It also happened to be the resource necessary for doing magic.
“Are you a mage, perhaps?” He wondered, trying to keep his tone calm even though every inhale made him acutely aware of the weapon poking his chest.
“La stado tansaw.” They hissed with an unmistakably female voice.
He raised both hands into the air. “I’m not even sure which of the local languages you’re speaking right now.” Al-Zahra was at a crossroads of commerce, the very beating heart of trade for the Emerald Caliphate. There were no fewer than a dozen commonly spoken tongues here, and the average local knew at least three.
None of the languages was English, though.
“Still… knifing me might not be in your best interest?” He glanced at the pedestrians around them. “Wouldn’t want to draw attention when you’re carrying that little treasure on you.”
His would-be captor appeared to realize his point and pulled away, though barely. She yanked him up with surprising strength for someone of her size, giving him a very judgmental once-over. The stranger then proceeded to loudly speak a bunch of gibberish at him, one hand holding his pajama shirt, the other waving the dagger around. The smoked glasses and cloth hid her expression and muffled her voice, but the tone had a distinct scolding edge to it.
Whatever she had said, the crowd appeared content with it, their curiosity partially sated, and turning the other way. Liam noticed a few pitying looks from among those with expressions he could read.
“Stado,” she said, pulling him into the shadow of the aqueduct, abruptly turning him away from her.
The dagger pressed against his lower back. “I see the knife makes a return.” Which did not make sense to him; he clearly didn’t pose a threat, she had no reason to—
A trumpet blared out further down the street, grinding his thoughts to a halting crash. Liam would have jumped out of his skin if not for the pointy weapon currently pressed against him. The other pedestrians had a milder response, more curious than panicked, hurrying along to clear away from the main road. From the side streets, more people began to pour out as a proper crowd began to form at either side of the road.
The owner of the blasted instrument was a lightly robed man riding on his own atop bipedal raptor-like brown-furred creatures. Liam perked up and grinned. It was a drakara, a domesticated pack-predator that had been adopted and altered by a wind god. Aside from cunning, the creatures possessed enhanced speed and a sense of smell, and were capable of summoning powerful gales when working in a group.
A hundred meters back came the rest of the pack. Unlike trumpet-guy, the riders themselves were armed with spears, covered from head to toe in chain mail, circular plates of armor notched on top, a conical helmet, and a blank metal mask with two narrow holes for them to see through.
Liam wanted to pet the fuzzy creatures, but there was a knife-on-back situation going on… and also the riders would run him through with their spears.
Even further back was an important-looking carriage being pulled by what could only be described as a building-sized spider made out of rubies.
The only possible target could be the VIP the riders were there to protect.
“Shit!” he hissed under his breath, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else.
“Stado!” she answered, increasing the pressure of the knife, briefly glancing at the riders before turning back down to the spell.
Liam’s mind whirled, trying to find a solution to the situation.
In the world of “Crystal Skylights,” spells were limited by two factors. The first was your own skill; the second, by how much aether you had available. All a mage had to do was extract the mana from the aether, shape it into the spell design, and once done… watch the fireworks. But as with all things, there was a catch: aether was crazy expensive. So much so that it was seen as beneath a mage’s attention if the task could be accomplished by a couple of hundred low-skill mercenaries within a handful of hours.
The stranger was going to do something big. Once she finished extracting all the mana from the aether, disrupting the spell before it was fully shaped would violently unleash all that power. Liam would likely be atomized alongside everything within a hundred meters.
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What options did that leave him?
Slowly, with both arms raised, he turned around to face her. The mage repeated the instruction from earlier, making threatening gestures with the knife, and Liam smiled a little at her clear confusion and concern.
“I either die now by the knife, or I die by the spell going wrong, or I die by the spell going right, or you kill me after the spell, or the guards kill me.” He cocked his head towards the approaching riders, the implicit threat that he’d scream and draw their attention enough to make her freeze. “Since it’s going to take you a few minutes to cast this thing, let’s figure out who you are…”
He stared at the smoked glass covering her eyes, and she stared back, the knife now against his gut. She was the first to break contact, glancing at the approaching riders, returning to her spell tentatively. Mumbling something under her breath, she began to speed up the extraction, the aether in her hands shrinking quickly as the red glow began to intensify.
“Red glow, which likely means a fire spell. You’re using just one hand, a talented mage. We’re in Al-Zahra, which reduces the number of candidates a lot… Female, quite rare among mage assassins…”
Mages didn’t grow on trees; they required a lot of studying and practice, meaning a lot of aether just to get them up to snuff. Only the very wealthy could afford such a thing, and even affluent noble families would abstain from investing in teaching magic to anyone but one or two scions.
“The drakara are being used as mounts rather than venerated as divine messengers, so this has to be well after the Era of Titans. That leaves… who? Irana?” He frowned, no, that wasn’t the right word. “Ilara? No… ah, Umira! Umira Dalimor.”
And she froze, a barely audible gasp escaping her. The red light being sucked out of the aether flickered and distorted for a fraction of a second. Suddenly, the pressure of the knife against his gut rose.
“Hey, hey!” Liam raised his hands again, trying to quickly recall all the details. “I don’t want any new holes.”
Umira Dalimor, a rather unfortunate figure within the Era of Bindings, was an unwilling pawn in the Sultan’s grab for power, coerced into murdering the Yulvenir patriarch in exchange for her sibling’s safety. And if Liam’s memory wasn’t misleading him, then what would await them would not be kind in any way. Umira would be used as the scapegoat for the assassination, while the older sibling would eventually replace her as the Sultan’s pet mage.
“Noor Dalimor.” Seeing how she twitched again, Liam was glad he hadn’t somehow botched the pronunciation to the point it was unrecognizable. “I know where he’s being held.”
His gaze flickered to the spell; the ball of aether was gone now, the red ring of light pulsed with power. Umira began twisting the ring into knots, using her one hand to pinch, pull, and entwine the spell as she formed the spell’s pattern. Liam really REALLY wanted to pay closer attention to the literal magic being shaped right in front of his very eyes, but this wasn’t the time.
“Hassim Daal. He’s the guy you need to look for; he’s… look, I know you don’t understand a word I’m saying, but you at least need to recognize that Hassim Daal is a name.” It was a very bad game of charades, made all the worse by the language barrier. And also the knife. Liam gesticulated as he spoke, miming himself with a chain around his neck while saying Noor’s name, then miming himself holding a rope when mentioning Hassim’s name. The stained glasses and covered face made it impossible to read any expressions, but the more he spoke, the slower her casting became.
“Hassim Daal.” She spoke the name, pulling the dagger away for a moment and pointing it at herself. “Umira Dalimor.” She added, then pointed it at him.
“Liam Carter.” He hastily answered, repeating his name before pointing at her and calling her name again.
“Liam, birniak shiyaew Hassim? Shiyaew Noor?” The dagger pointed down at the ground.
Using the tip of her boot, she had drawn a circle with three lines coming in and joining at the center. It was a simplification of the city; each line represented one of three aqueducts, dividing the circle into a singular huge area roughly three-quarters of its area, with the remaining pieces being an eighth each. She was asking him where Noor was being held captive.
Liam carefully pressed the tip of his slipper against the larger chunk, near the edge but not too far away from the aqueduct. His designs of the city weren’t precise enough; he wouldn't be able to tell the exact street, but the broad location? That was easy. The Sultan couldn’t afford others finding out he’d imprisoned a noble, and the heart of Al-Zahra was nothing but a den of magic-bolstered politics.
The mage stared down at the drawing, then at him.
In her left hand the dagger, in her right the red mana had been twisted and shaped into an intricate woven pattern of knots, pulsing with a heartbeat of their own. Umira looked at him, then at the approaching riders.
“Fiklishar.”
She looked up at him, sheathing the knife and removing her smoked glasses. Her eyes were not those of a human; her pupils were rectangular, irises the same glowing orange as magma. She searched his green eyes, peering deeply enough that, for a moment, he feared she was using an enchanted item to actually look into his mind.
“Fiklishar, Liam.”
She repeated the word, tone grave with significance.
Whatever she found, it appeared to satisfy some unknown criteria.
Raising the hand holding the spell, the crowd around them instantly broke into a panic, with shrieks, screams, and everyone rushing away in a desperate attempt to escape whatever was about to happen.
“Wait.” Liam’s eyes widened as he realized she wasn’t aiming at the caravan but at the aqueduct. “Waitwaitwaitwa-”
Clenching her fist, the spell collapsed just as the riders began to bark out commands.
The mass of glowing red rope contracted into itself, collapsing and growing brighter and hotter, becoming impossible to look at. It was like being next to a bonfire. The screams grew louder, this time joined by those of the riders and their mounts, horns blared out in alarm. But it was too late.
The spell blinked out of existence, and for a fraction of a second, it was as if it had never been there to begin with.
A blinding flash of light surged out of the stone that made up the aqueduct, not directly over Liam but slightly further down the street, between them and the riders. The light subsided, but the stone was left red hot, bulging, fighting against the enchantments. The magic holding the section of the aqueduct in place lost out, and in an explosion of rock, steam, and water, a torrential cascade of water of impossible proportions fell down onto the street.
The literal river was dunked down on them, the water surging down in a brutal waterfall. The street became a two-way river as the riders were pushed back by a wall of water at least seven feet high. The exact same thing rushed in their direction, too fast for anyone to be able to escape.
Liam barely had time to feel Umira grab hold of his bathrobe with an iron grip and blazing eyes.
“Fiklishar, Liam.”
It occurred to him he should’ve brought a bathing suit.
Then the wall of water hit them, and the world became a muddy whirlpool.