Freedom
Eryn - The gardens
Luffa had gathered over 30 of her brothers and sisters. She regretted not being able to bring Sala. He was beyond her reach on some new mission with his precious captain. She had no idea why he put her up on such a pedestal. Maybe it went beyond simple service.
“This is the place.” Luffa said, drawing her party to a slow walk. They’d wound a path through a garden that rarely saw foot traffic. The elves were so pretentious about their green spaces they never even made use of them. They were just status symbols to puff out their bloated egos.
“This doesn’t feel right.” One of her sisters said, lagging. “What if they find out?”
Her fingertips brushed the magical collar around her neck. It crackled with negative energy. She didn’t flinch, but Luffa could see the pain register.
“Where we’re going, they won’t be able to follow. We’re going home. Away from the elves and their arenas, houses, and games. Back to where our people come from.”
“But we came from here?” Another asked.
“No. This is just where they’ve kept us. We don’t belong here. Home is out there. All we have to do is to be brave enough to go look for it.”
Luffa led them the last stretch of the way. True to his word, an Umbral Plane doorway stood in a small opening. She blinked, half in shock. “It’s here. Right where he said it would be.”
“You sound surprised?” One of the male primals said.
She bit back the urge to share that she wasn’t confident Ominek could be trusted. Instead, she gave a soft shrug.
“It sounded too good to be true.”
She watched the air in front of the portal cool and billow into a mist away from it. The portal swirled with inky black and violet void magic. A ring of runes rimmed it like a door frame, giving shape to the magic. Negentropy to entropy.
“Is everyone ready?” Luffa asked.
“Ready to be traitors?” Cenine said from behind the group. All the primals whirled in shock. A quartet of Emerald Guards stood with spell rifles at the ready. Cenine stood in front with sword and board. The sunlight glinted off her gleaming shield, an engraving of a lion and sun on its front face. Cenine’s helmet wasn’t snapped on, her wounded snarl exposed for all to see.
“The ArchPriest trusted you Luffa, and this is how you repay him? How you repay us?”
Luffa blinked in blind shock. They had made slaves of her and her people to fight in conflicts and more often than not, show off in the arena for petty private squabbles, and this woman had the nerve, the gall, the audacity to confront her about repayment?”
“You stole my people from our colonies. Shackled us. Bound us. Subjected us to to your whims and treat us like third-class citizens and have the unmatched ego to confront me about repayment? LOOK AT US!” Luffa roared, flames roiling off of her as her rage billowed. Grass hissed into flames as the ground cracked dry beneath her feet.
“Not one of us lacks a binding collar. We aren’t people, we’re property. We aren’t citizens, we’re weapons. Well, we’re done being pointed at whomever you deign worthy and hurl us against your opponents without consideration. No more!”
Luffa’s hands trembled with anger and every point that Cenine flinched at further emboldened her. Pained understanding flashed across Cenine’s expression for a fleeting moment, and Luffa let her guard slip. This proved to be a mistake as Cenine’s brows furrowed and her face twisted into an all too beautiful scowl.
“I can’t help the way things began. All I can do is prevent what may come. Right now, we have necromancers and shacklers running riot across our planet. Are you really willing to throw away all the good you’ve done now? To be branded a traitor? Because I’ll warn you now, I will chase you to the ends of the universe and bring you back or kill you.”
Luffa’s expression shifted from regret to revulsion rapidly as Cenine dug in. There was no getting through to them. There was no change to be found here. Only pain and violence.
Ceneine drew her spell blade, a golden gleaming weapon ornately decorated with runes and glyphs and wreathed in a golden flame. The blade leveled directly at Luffa. “Then I declare you all traitors to the Mage Federation for dereliction of duty during wartime.”
Luffa staggered back. Cenine’s words slammed into her like an invisible spell. The spell warrior’s wrath poured out raw and unfiltered. She realized in this moment she’d made a mistake. Though she’d make the same choice again, she was seeing first hand already the consequences of her decision. For a moment, she grieved the loss of a potential friendship. Cenine was a good warrior. She fought bravely and fiercely to protect the people that lived here. The only problem? She didn’t count as one of those people. Her back straightened as she reached that conclusion.
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“So be it.” Luffa said. As the words left her mouth, she saw the other primals around her stand taller too. It was like watching them all find a sudden wave of confidence. She strode forward to the front of the crowd, the way Amara or Akamori might.
“If you need to brand us as traitors? Do so. But we won’t be slaves to fight your wars for you. To battle in your arenas for your entertainment. You’ve robbed us of our lives. And we’re here to take them back.”
The Emerald Guards snapped their shields up. The Primals hands raised, some ready to weave, others ready to cast. A few scattered leaves billowed across the expanse between the two groups. Luffa and Cenine both just trying to do right by their people but placed on opposite sides of a fight neither wanted, or needed. Then the calm snapped. Two bolts of light sailed free of gold and silver spell rifles.
The primals were in motion in an instant. Some cast barriers of light and fire. Others still hurled bolts of their own. For a moment, both sides held firm as enemy fire splashed against defenses while they returned fire. But the Primals outnumbered the guards, and this personnel deficit put Cenine’s group on the back foot. Cenine needed to put them off balance and Luffa knew this. They did not train her as a warrior, but she fought like one. That made her damned dangerous.
Luffa shored up their defenses and took control. She created a four-man wedge at the front and put the rest into two-man columns with the rear of the formation facing the portal. She directed the rear flank into the portal in a staggered retreat as they fought. She didn’t have to win this fight. They just had to survive it.
Half way into her attack to the rear, some of her people cried out in pain and went down. A Cenine had drawn a control wand on them. Arcs of painful energy lashed into the primals the wand controlled. Some of her people peeled off to help them through while Luffa advanced forward, feeling the golden magic aura radiating wildly around her, responding to her rage. Her need to protect her people. As she stomped forward, swatting aside spell bolts casually, her skin mottled dark grey. The stone skin spell summoning forth. Her eyes glowed an angry acid green.
Spell bolts splashed lamely against her radiant defensive aura. Power surged through her body. Fire strengthened her body, light strengthened her aura, and stone hardening her flesh. A flicker of fear flashed across Cenine’s expression. There it was. The sudden realization they’d lost control. But they were partially wrong in that assessment. They weren’t just now losing it, they’d already lost it.
Her hands snapped out, striking the barrels of spell rifles, knocking them up and away. Light bolts sizzled through the leafy canopy above them. A massive shield surged forward to smash into her, but she planted her feet and set her shoulder and met the irresistible force with her immovable object.
Cenine’s blade clashed against Luffa’s stone solid skin. Brilliant sparks dancing free with each blow. Thanks to Luffa’s two tiered defense, the spell blade did little more than rake its edge across her unbreakable skin. The Primal surged forward with a war cry. Years of poor treatement and pent up fury unleashed in that moment.
Cenine’s face twisted with momentary panic as the hardened warrior experienced something fleetingly rare on this world. Fear. The Primals unfettered power forced the spell warrior on the backfoot, not allowing her the opportunity to use the control wand. Cenine parried and blocked Luffa’s strikes, but pressed the Emerald Guard back. Her companions were too close to use their rifles, a disadvantage Luffa maid them pay for.
A quick knee strike to the gut, followed by a level 3 three aether blast to the helmet practically melted the face off of one of the guards. Support fire from the last few Primals waiting to step through the portal gave her cover to disengage. She blocked a shield check from Cenine and knocked the control wand free of the spell warrior’s hand, then cupped both hands together and channeled a level 4 blast of raw plasma. The light magic draw made her golden aura flicker, and her glow dimmed momentarily before everything flashed blue.
The next instant she was propelled backwards by her canon attack through the Umbral portal. Luffa saw Cenine dive for the control wand just as Ominek waved the portal shut. The last thing Luffa saw of Eryn was Cenine’s face twisted into a howling scowl. Ominek clapped his hands together as if ridding them of dust and approached Luffa extending a hand.
“Your trip here looks to have been eventful. I trust everyone made it ok?”
Luffa did a quick headcount. She didn’t even notice they’d lost a few in the brief but heated exchange. She sighed, shaking her head. “No. Most did, but not all.”
Ominek genuinely frowned. “Shame. However, the good news, is you’re all free now.”
He produced a control wand that issued to the deactive spell to all their collars. There were a series of mechanical pops as all the primal’s collars disengaged, and then fell to the deck. She just realized they were in a ship, not on a planet surface. Ominek nodded to her, “It was necessary to prevent any of the locals backtracking you to our home.”
He waved broadly about his ship. “It’s heavily warded, so your exit from the system will be quite difficult to scrye and track.”
Luffa took the hand hesitantly and rose. On her feet she released the spells, maintaining her stone skill and golden aura. Her eyes faded back to natural black, losing the earthy acidic green hue they took on in her stone skin form. Without the powerful electrostatic charge of her aura, her hair fell down to her back again. Luffa exhaled softly as the rush of power left her. When she looked up at Ominek she nearly shivered at his almost genuine grin.
“Come, I want you all to see this firsthand.” Ominek gestured for the gaggle of primals to follow him out of the room his portal had dumped them onto. A set of double doors hissed open and Luffa could see a large command chair and a pair of golden sticks that resembled the controls the Brotherhood of Man used in their non magitech hardware. They had exposed her to it off and on during her time training on Eryn. Outside the confines of the ship’s bridge.
In the umbral shadow of Eryn, a void gate swirled and crackled open. In the bridge of Ominek’s cruiser, the dread lord smiled as the ship passed through. No chance of pursuit from the Emerald Guard. He turned to survey his prize. Roughly 35 trained and experienced combat primals. Most with Light and Earth magic, some possessed more aspects. They would make respectable additions to the Sauridius legions.
A quick glance at Luffa revealed her unmasked distrust of him. Good. He would need her to play the voice of reason. All to leverage her people against her with by showing she was too afraid to embrace this new change she’d forced upon her people. She no doubt suspected he had something up his sleeve. She was smart. But she wasn’t as clever as she’d need to be. In the game of survival, only the most canny wyrm lived to see another sunrise.