The Orb was breathtaking. It was something I had never witnessed, something I had never truly believed I would ever witness. It was surreal and impossible.
Gravity seemed not to be fully in play. The Orb sank from the sky, passing down through the clouds like a mythical angel—not quite gliding, not quite floating, but dropping toward the surface of the earth with a majesty, almost as though it had intent. As I looked up into the sky and watched the shape falling so unnaturally slowly, I felt like I truly was witnessing something divine. What I was seeing was not of this earth. What I was seeing was beyond the reckoning of mortals. It was beyond the conceivable definitions of the natural world.
The Orb itself was perfectly smooth, light in color, but not white. It was totally unreflective, showing no mirroring of the colors of the sky and clouds above and around it, no reflections of the earth that it ponderously lowered down to touch. It wasn’t white. It was pale, but other colors seemed to swim in it, like a rainbow dissolved in a perfectly spherical raindrop.
I could only see it so clearly under the powers of SIGHT. I truly had no sense of the size of the thing. From this distance and angle, it could have been as large as a mountain or as small as something like a horse or even a man. I had no context.
I took all this in while blazing across the landscape under Footfield.
The Orb had been ascertained to be dropping several miles away, through rough woodland that would hinder the footmen and the horses. I and my three Griidlord companions raced now across the open stretches of hills and meadows, thousands of men with each of us. The trees neared, and soon we would need to relinquish our Footfields. The plan was standard. We would race forward, moving faster than biology would allow man or horse to do. We wouldn’t be able to use Footfield in the confines of the woods, but we would be able to close the distance rapidly, our armored skin unworried by undergrowth or thorns.
The detachments of soldiers would follow on the double. They came for two reasons. It was possible that they might arrive and be useful in capturing the Orb. It was also possible that more Orbs would fall—they were said to sometimes fall singly, sometimes in clusters—and the army could secure and guard some Orbs while the Griidlords captured and absorbed the Flows from others.
The ground became less even, and the wall of trees loomed. I took my cues from Chowwick, racing onward, past the point of what I felt was comfortable, only releasing the Footfield when I saw that he was doing so.
The field peeled back, and our lightning bolt race was over. We wasted no time. The organization of the forces would be left to Darkwater, Ironveil, and Farseer. We Griidlords had our role to play.
We formed together and pressed into the trees without consulting with the nobles in the army. Time was of the essence. This was my first time pursuing an Orb, but I could sense the urgency from the others. They were all usually so cool about everything; they’d all lived decades in the suits, they’d all been here before over and over. And yet there was an urgency in them that was not quite panic, but didn’t entirely escape the definition either.
We ran close together. Our suit muscles let us fly. Brambles and branches disintegrated before us as we sprinted through the trees.
Tara was holding herself back. The Arrow was faster than the other suits. She shouted to me, “Will I go ahead, recon, and return?”
I wanted to laugh at the silliness of this. Why was the Sword the default leader? Why was she, who had so much more experience than I did, consulting and asking permission? Chowwick would make a better leader at this point in my development—she should be asking him.
I shouted to Chowwick, “That makes sense to me. What do you think?”
Chowwick barked, “That’s what we normally do, lad! Let her loose, she can scope it out!”
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Tara waited for no further confirmation. She let her leash loose and speared away from us at a speed I found hard to reconcile. I was already moving so quickly; it was inconceivable that she could move so much faster.
Chowwick panted. He was keeping pace with us, but his suit was far slower. He pushed himself to keep up, Magneblade and I not relenting much in our rate of travel. Chowwick gasped, “It’s a big enough one.”
Magneblade growled, his helm projecting his voice to us, “15 Flows at least. Might be twenty. The bastard is big.”
I said, “Is there a chance we can get there before anyone else? Could we snag it for free?”
The undergrowth thinned as the trees grew larger. We were moving through an older part of the forest. We leapt and smashed through old fallen trees like wrecking balls, losing no momentum as we raced.
Magneblade said, “Could happen. Probably won’t. But it could.” His voice sounded regretful. He’d waited long enough to cross blades with another Griidlord.
“How can you tell how big it is? In the sky, there’s nothing to compare it to.”
Chowwick roared, the strain of our pace evident in his voice, “It’s something you get the knack for. You can gauge the distance as you do more of it. You can tell from the colors. The more colors, the bigger the fucker usually is. A small one, 5 Flows or so, that’ll be almost white. A really big one, 25, 30 Flows, that’ll be a mess of colors, won’t look nearly so pale as this one.”
We crossed a river, racing right into it and just pressing through. Even my momentum, as terrific as it was, was cushioned and absorbed by the water. I felt my body slice into the water at first, but the drag accumulated, and in a few moments, I was just wading, the monstrous power of the suit dampened by the resistance. Chowwick was slowed the most.
Magneblade and I cleared the opposite bank first. I found myself hopping from foot to foot, feeling the urgency, the drive to press on. Chowwick carved through the water below us, leaving a wake like a tidal wave.
Magneblade looked at my anxiousness, could read my mind. “It’s not worth pressing on without Chowwick. If there are other Griidlords or forces present, we’ll be vulnerable without our Shield. Wait for him. Racing ahead with the intention of him catching up could end in disaster.”
I tried to calm myself. Even though it only cost seconds for Chowwick to reach us, those seconds seemed to stretch into an unfathomable stretch of time.
Then we were off again. The ground began to slope down again. Such was the frantic nature of our pace that I almost didn’t see Tara racing back to join us. I slowed my pace, expecting her to stop, but she turned and joined us, staying alongside us as we moved.
Tara was unphased by the pace of her motion. She said, “There’s nobody on it now, but there are Footfields approaching from the north.”
Chowwick asked, “With soldiers?”
She said, “I don’t think so. There are forests to the north as well. I think they’re doing what we did. There’s probably support coming for them, but from the other side of the forest.”
I said, “How far is the forest? Will our forces reach us first, or will theirs?”
Tara was slow to respond. “I think… I think it looks like the trees for them are thinner. Their line of trees is further away than ours is from the Orb, but there’s less for theirs to cross.”
Magneblade said, “Then their cavalry might get in here before ours.”
I understood the gravity of his statement. A Griidlord might be the match for hundreds, even thousands of men. But a Griidlord supported by spears and arrows was much the greater danger than one without. Cavalry counted double. A Griidlord engaged and distracted by combat with another could be surprised by a mounted soldier. A lance or spear, driven by the momentum of a charging mounted cavalryman, could be deadly to the unaware Griidlord. And if there were power weapons in an army, they would probably be in the hands of the mounted nobles and knights. Those could be truly game-changing when a Griidlord was already tasked with defending themself from the assault of another with the same god-like powers.
We burst through the trees and into open space. Once we were clear of the obstacles, we surged forward again under the Footfields. I could see the Orb now as well, nestled on the crest of a hill, barely more than a half mile away.
When we reached the Orb I thought that maybe we could start siphoning Flows. Even if it was just for minutes, the four of us could maybe pull something out of the Orb in case the force that arrived forced us back.
But almost immediately I felt the distortion of reality, the strange static-like hum. I looked to the north. The other bolts of flashing light, four of them, were only a few hundred yards away.
Chowwick turned to me, his helmed head nodded. Then he turned back to face the oncoming Griidlords.
I followed suit, drew my sword, and prepared to contest my first Orb.