The night before the Order’s assault.
Curtain walls delineated the roughly pentagonal perimeter of Castle Portwatch. From the outside, one would see a wide road, about four carriages in width, separating the castle’s outermost walls from a sea of brick buildings. There was a gatehouse to the south opening up to a small plaza, 50 meters square.
Ordinarily, the roads and plaza would be busy with city folk on their way home, wishing to see wide open air for even a minute. Today, they were filled with barricades, mantlets, and searchlights facing the castle. The surrounding residents had been evacuated a long time ago; after Kinesia’s rampage, the citizens gladly followed the instruction to flee, in both fear and knowledge of what a true battlefield might look like.
Priestess Cecilia was finally at her last stop before the battle: a command tent hidden behind a thick row of buildings. There was a squadron of scout riflemen here — thirty men in all — as well as the overall commander of the battle and his staff.
They were all kneeling before her in prayer. She raised her staff, and a soft glow of light flew from it, into the sky, before breaking into little motes of light that settled on each and every soldier present. “Lumina watches over us all,” she said. “In life and in death,” the soldiers replied.
With the final blessing given, everyone rushed to their posts. A small squad of knights accompanied Cecilia as her guard as they rushed to the designated site of the field hospital, not far behind the frontlines. It wasn’t just them: many other smaller units zipped in and out of dark alleys, finding their ways to their objectives.
Cecilia and her guards reached the field hospital just in time. It was actually a small warehouse that had been abandoned in the evacuation. It still stank of the rotten fish that had to be removed the other day. They never really could get the smell out.
Nevertheless, the cots were in order. Cecilia dismissed her guards, and they spread out throughout the warehouse. She looked back to the middle of the warehouse, where there was a cleared circular space … and a tall statue of Lumina.
She approached the statue, fully knowing that what she was about to do would kick off the battle. Good men would die, but so would their enemies who had committed far graver sins than themselves.
Looking up at the visage of the statue, she couldn’t help but feel that there was something off about it — that this wasn’t Lumina at all.
Upon having that thought, something about the visage of the statue moved — or it didn’t? She blinked and shook her head, and on looking at the statue again, she confirmed it was very much unmoving. Perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her, but she was so sure that it was smiling just a moment ago.
Well, if Lumina was smiling on her today, then She was smiling on all of them, too. She summed up all of her courage and took a step towards the statue. She knelt and placed her hand in one of Lumina’s, muttering a short prayer.
“… watch over us all.”
The statue drew mana out of Cecilia, and she felt a hint of fatigue building up in her every muscle. It was all over in a few seconds, however, and she stood up again with shaky legs, backing away to watch the statue do its thing.
The statue had a faint glow, but that glow grew brighter as seconds passed. Cecilia, anticipating what would come next, looked away — and the statue flashed like flare-sand.
With this, a defensive barrier covered the field hospital — but the mana pulse was strong enough that anyone with Mana Sense would be able to feel a tingle from a mile away.
The Order’s mages felt that tingle, and upon seeing the faints aurora lights dancing above where the field hospital should’ve been, they gulped and prepared their spells.
What followed was a thirty-minute exchange of magical artillery. The Order’s mages fired spells that arced high up in the sky before coming back down and raining on the castle. The castle had its own barrier, however, and many of the spells just splattered across the roof of an invisible dome in the sky.
The castle’s barrier was older tech, however, and both sides knew that. The Order’s spells only intensified, covering the sky in pretty meteor lights that came crashing down as bombs. Finally, a few of them started slipping through the cracks.
The defenders fired back with their own mortars and rockets. The sound of it was drumming at soldiers’ chests and the whistling from the wild rockets were like a broken pipe organ.
Among the defender’s replies, there were no spells. Wiz’s mages were being held in reserve, it seemed. The Order’s commanders feared those talented mages for whatever crazy magic they might shoot back at them with, but now, they feared them even more. Had they fired their spells now, then the Order would have been able to adapt to the nature of their magic much earlier, but it appeared that Wiz’s mages were planning on being uncertain factors until the worst possible moment.
Already, several of the surrounding buildings had collapsed under heavy bombardment. The Order wasn’t even doing much damage to the castle because of its barrier — but even with the castle’s barrier, the Order’s few spells that did get through managed to do a very important thing: it suppressed the defenders, keeping them from taking a look outside.
The defenders on the ramparts had hidden themselves inside the walls, keeping themselves well away from the heat wave of the magic raining down on them. Really, all it took was for one guy to turn into red steam to convince everyone else to keep their heads down.
With none of the defenders looking, Jon and Alyssa charged straight at the walls, finding their way to a sally gate at the eastern section of the wall. Behind the bars of the sally gate was a huge amount of rubble, clearly the defenders’ doing, but they weren’t here for the sally gate.
In the construction of military fortifications, there was always a powerful mason involved, and where there were powerful masons, there were secret circles — and where there were secrets, there was always Ravena. A backdoor like this was always at the disposal of the Theater and Her agents — assuming, of course, they knew where to look.
There was a faux archway just a few paces away, along the wall, like a doorway paved over with bricks.
Alyssa touched the archway. “My Lady, a favor, please,” she said aloud.
[Why, of course.]
The bricks seemed to fall apart, but before they hit the ground, they stopped in mid-air like they were suspended in time. Jon followed Alyssa through the secret path, and time seemed to rewind as the bricks were brought back together, disguising the entrance, cemented to each other once again.
“I know this one,” Alyssa said. There were many passages, and she and Jon had split the work on memorizing them all — they didn’t have the luxury of choosing their infiltration point, after all — and it just turned out that this one was one of hers. “I’ll lead the way.”
They squeezed themselves through the confines of narrow passages, relying on special leather goggles to see in the dark. They could feel the vibrations of the spell bombardment above, and it sounded as if the bricks were rattling together. The castle and its ramparts were sturdier than that, however; not even an all-out fight from the resident lords would be able to bring everything crashing down … maybe a bit.
“Where does this go?” Jon asked.
“The northern tower’s pantry” — Alyssa went quiet, listening to the walls, then she looked at Jon and put a finger to her lips.
There was always the threat of anti-sappers. Digging under a castle wasn’t a new tactic, and so there were always people assigned to listen to the telltale sound of digging. The same people had ears sharp enough to hear voices through the walls.
From the outer wall, their secret path led down below ground, then straight, then up again, but in a narrow spiral. The steps were uncomfortably high to the point that it felt more like climbing a slope conveniently full of handholds.
They reached the end: a wooden panel, just barely big enough to let a person crawl out. Alyssa put an ear up against the panel, listening for anything or anyone possibly on the other side. There didn’t seem to be anyone, so she grabbed the handle and slid the panel aside just a little, cracking it open just enough for her to take a peek.
Her night goggles could only show her a grainy image, as if the world were made of laser dots that floated in space. Again, there was nothing and no one — just a pantry stocked with enough flour to withstand a months-long siege.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She slid the panel away, letting three of her guns go first. She climbed out, and once her feet found ground, confirming no enemies in the vicinity, she looked back and beckoned Jon to come out.
Although the defenders hadn’t been alerted to their arrival, one man was. Lord Wiz had interfered with the castle’s local defenses, usurping its surveillance and alarm network for his own purposes — and now, he was happy that Jon had finally come.
It would be far too simple, however, to simply allow Jon to come and meet him. As his master, he should be putting his new apprentice through the wringer. He had quite the high expectations for him, and it just wouldn’t do to spoonfeed him at all.
Well, there was that, and he also wanted a convenient excuse to have all his previous students killed. Oh, some of them were good, but the good ones weren’t here. Only the fools were here: the arrogant sons of rich nobility. Just one taste of magic, and they’d suddenly felt as if everyone else were below them; the ability to blow apart a boulder with a single spell could scarcely compensate for a terrible personality.
Instead, he would have them die today for a good cause: the Fall of the House of Wiz, and to this end, he had carefully composed its script.
Jon and Alyssa cautiously explored the northern tower. Each floor followed the same pattern: a hallway that followed the circumference, providing access to three or four rooms in the center. The placement of stairs made for a spiral movement pattern in going up and down the building.
They aimed for a footbridge somewhere in the upper floors that would lead into the castle itself, even if that was just such a terrible place to be caught in a crossfire. Still, they had no choice but to take the bridge. Sprinting across the open grass during an on-going artillery slugging match was just a little bit worse.
Already, one of the Order’s spells hit the side of the tower, somewhere by the floors above them, sending a wash of scalding-hot air gushing through the wind slits in the wall beside them. Anyone who had been on the same floor as the spell would have been air-fried.
They pressed on. The fact that there was no resistance whatsoever put them on edge. Well, really, wouldn’t it be a stupid move not to have any interior guards at all?
When they reached the foot bridge, they found that their opponent had done the smart thing of concentrating their defenses around known choke points — such as the bridge. Instead of meeting a mercenary squad, however, they met something much more troublesome: a pair of black-robed mages, standing on the opposite side of the bridge, and they were tracking Jon and Alyssa with greed in their eyes.
Jon’s and Alyssa’s minds each raced to take in the environment and the situation. The only cover they had were low parapets, low enough that they had to crouch low with their chests almost against the ground to get any good cover out of them. These were on either side of the start of the five-foot-wide stone bridge, which itself only had wooden fencing on either side — good for workplace safety, but scarcely anything that could provide adequate cover.
The enemy mages were also in the same situation. They were standing behind low parapets, sticking out like sore thumbs.
Immediately, Alyssa opened up with a barrage of aimed rifle fire. Her bullets ripped up the mages’ robes and covered them in explosive fire. All the while, she and Jon took cover, with Jon taking left, and herself taking right.
The smoke surrounding the mages hadn’t even cleared yet when they returned fire with what Jon regarded as out-of-place projectiles. All he witnessed as he ducked low behind his parapet were ice shards and concentrated plasma bolts exploding against the facade of the tower behind them. It was an unholy combination of fire and shrapnel, and it was all he could do to raise the lapel of his suit to cover his face. The ice shrapnel cut into the back of his palm, feeling both cold and warm at the same time, somehow — it must’ve been his blood.
No matter the enemy’s superior firepower, however, it didn’t look like they could aim very well at all. Most of their shots were landing in a five-meter spread around them, and the only thing they had going for them was their fire rate.
Jon risked it and unslung the carbine from his back, sticking his eyes out and leveling his sights at the first mage he saw. He fired a single shot, and all he saw was a small explosion where he’d aimed —
Bolts of yellow came at him in rapid succession from that target point. He saw it just in time, ducking down and letting the plasma bolts turn the face of the parapet into slag; some of the molten rock splattered across his suit, but they were just tiny droplets that cooled off quickly enough.
So they can aim if they want to. Seemed they were in a tight spot. Their defenses also blocked bullets — just like Wiz. It would be a good assumption from now on to think that most mages had some way to protect against bullets; they were, after all, the most common form of attack in this era.
The question now was: were they as strong as Wiz? Obviously not. If they were, they’d be rushing the bridge and steamrolling him and Alyssa. Their defenses might have some kind of limit or weakness that kept them from rushing headlong into fire.
He gestured to Alyssa, pointing at one of her carbines; she hadn’t brought many of them, mostly bringing along pistols, considering the tight confines of the castle’s back doors they’d expected to take.
She understood him correctly, and the carbine floated into Jon’s hands — and now he had two carbines.
He crawled a short distance, displacing from his old position. Alyssa gave him the courtesy of pouring fire on the mages to get their attention, floating up four pistols at a time and firing and discarding eight of them in short, sequential order. Half her shots hit their mark, but again, to no avail. Dots of miniature starfire and ice started to come for her, and she didn’t wait for them to get bigger before she ducked down.
With the mages’ attention on her, Jon popped up, shouldering both carbines and aligning each of their sights with each of his eyes. The carbines rested on the top edge of the parapet, shaking a little with the vibrations of the Order’s magic barrage while Jon acquired his targets.
Between the glints of incoming ice and fire, he made out a person in chrome armor and a tattered cloak, wielding a maestro’s wand that sputtered out plasma. The other mage was obscured behind a pavise shield. His mark was decided.
It only took a second for him to acquire the fire mage in both his sights, and a split second to squeeze magic both through guns. The first bullet exploded against the mage’s personal barrier, but the second one, having arrived at the same time, made it through. It struck the mage in the neck, severing his brain-body connection through the base of his skull in an explosion of steam and gore.
The mage’s death confirmed Jon’s hypothesis: their defenses could only handle one projectile at a time. Even so, their performance was impressive, capable of withstanding Alyssa’s barrage that was like a machine gun.
Alyssa had watched Jon shoulder and fire two carbines at once, and the fact that fire magic stopped hitting them was proof enough for her to try out the same maneuver herself. There was a lull in the incoming attacks — perhaps the ice mage was shocked at his comrade’s swift death — and Alyssa took this opportunity to emerge with a pistol in either hand.
Through her night goggles, she spotted three or so pixels move just the wrong way — so that’s where she aimed. Two bullets left their barrels, and two bullets hit the mage’s defenses.
To Alyssa’s dismay, the mage was unscathed. His defenses were better than the fire mage’s, while the fire mage could sustain an attack for far longer than himself; it was in such a way that they had formed a versatile team.
They’d dreamed of reigning supreme over the magic world together — the Brothers of Fire and Ice … or some name like that. They hadn’t settled on one yet.
And now, they never will. The ice mage took all his grief and anger, turning it into energy to fuel his counterattack. Although his brother was widely considered the more offensive-oriented of the two, that didn’t mean the ice mage was weak. Rather, it was his brother who was better at ‘sustaining’ offensive attacks, while he was the one who protected him … and then delivered the killing blow, himself.
A lance of ice grew above his head, getting longer by the second. Alyssa saw this, hitting the guy with a volley of double bullets, then triple bullets when those didn’t work.
Nothing worked, so she did the next best thing — and threw herself aside. A second later, a lance of ice crashed through her parapet, reducing it into rubble. The lance itself remained embedded in the archway of the tower behind her.
Jon winced. He confirmed that Alyssa was still alive with just a glance, but for a moment, he was transfixed on the destroyed parapet. He’d had enough of anti-materiel weapons to last a lifetime, and he didn’t need to see them again in the next one — this one.
He threw himself aside as his own parapet exploded with its very own ice lance lodged halfway through. Finding himself face to face with a wryly smiling Alyssa on the floor, he made up his mind.
That second shot had been weaker than the first. That mage wouldn’t be able to sustain his attacks for much longer. Even so, it wouldn’t take much longer for the ice mage to nail either of them with an ice lance, either.
These next few seconds were going to decide whether it was going to be either him or them.
Jon got up and charged across the bridge. No sooner, ice shards came zipping past him, then at him. With a light application of Force, he parried away the few shards that had come dangerously close. He whipped out a pistol, lined up the sights, and fired straight at the fatigued mage, all in the span of half a second.
The man’s defense barrier barely held up against the shot, and he stumbled backwards as more of his strength was sapped out of him, disappearing behind the parapet.
Jon skidded to a stop at the end of the bridge, only to be met by a mage on the ground whose hair was quickly turning white as five ice lances above him accumulated into dense kinetic penetrators.
It was practically point blank range for magic, and for something akin to an anti-materiel round in power, there were five such projectiles pointed right at Jon. Thanks to Hastened Sight, he just barely managed to spot the lances as he’d come into view of the mage, and with the help of Perfect Motion, he bent his entire body backwards from the knee up, letting it fall away as a shotgun of ice lances ripped through the space where his body had just been.
He brought his body back up and promptly shot the mage, putting a single bullet in his head.
Alyssa caught up to him, and together, they both stared at the corpse of who was once a young man, but now was more like a shriveled-up old man. “He used up his entire life,” Alyssa remarked. “Come on. Let’s go.”
***
Name: Jon Fuze
Level: 10
Kills: 225 → 227
Kills to Next Level: 0 / 50 → 2 / 50
Skill Proofs: 7
| Skill Claims |
Aerial Lockbox (Unlocks Lvl. 15)
+ Fire Manipulation (Unlocks Lvl. 10, READY)
+ Ice Manipulation (Unlocks Lvl. 10, READY)
| Skills |
Summon Scribetool (Tier 1)
Perfect Motion (Tier 1, MAX)
Hastened Sight (Tier 1)
Force (Components: 1)
[Oh? How hasty. Are you nervous?]
Skill Proofs: 7 (-2) → 5
| Skill Claims |
Aerial Lockbox (Unlocks Lvl. 15)
(-) Fire Manipulation (Unlocks Lvl. 10)
(-) Ice Manipulation (Unlocks Lvl. 10)
| Skills |
Summon Scribetool (Tier 1)
Perfect Motion (Tier 1, MAX)
Hastened Sight (Tier 1)
Force (Components: 1)
(+) Fire Manipulation (Tier 1)
(+) Ice Manipulation (Tier 1)
***
They disappeared into the belly of Castle Portwatch, a place undoubtedly filled with many more mages from many different specializations of magic.