“Showing Arkana,” Gruul responded to the tense Knights pointing their weapons at him. He quickly stopped whatever he was doing with the rock as it stopped glowing and the whirlpool disappeared.
“Don’t try anything like that again!” shouted the Knight Captain, putting down his weapon and signaling the other Knights to also lower the weapons.
“I don’t understand what that is, we’ve never seen something like that,” Adams said as he got closer to the ogres and the rock as well.
“No Arkana?” Krolu asked, seemingly taken aback by the engineer’s question. “How?”
Gruul chuckled, shaking his head and crossing his arms once again. “Earth people. No Arkana. No magic.”
“Huh?!” Krolu and Trook exclaimed in surprise at Gruul.
“Magic?” asked Adams with a confused expression on his face. “I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about.”
Gruul nodded, before turning to look at the Knight Captain. “We now show magic. Please no shoot.”
The Knight Captain was slightly taken aback by the way the ogre talked to him. “As long as you don’t do anything we deem dangerous…”
“He was talking about magic, right? Like, card tricks or something like that?” asked one of the other Knight escorts with a low voice towards another one standing next to him.
“Quiet!” shouted the Knight Captain with a quick turn of his head towards the chattering one, who stood up straight, and turned his face forward again.
Gruul took a step back, lifted his arm forward and opened his hand with the palm facing the ceiling. Everyone looked at Gruul’s hand with expectation, with Adams keeping his eyes right on the ogre’s hand, barely blinking. Suddenly, in the middle of Gruul’s hand, a spark appeared, which then increased in size to become a small, stable fire. Adam’s eyes widened when he saw that, and a few of the Knights gasped at the floating fire.
“This. Magic,” Gruul said, keeping the flame steady on his hand as he slowly moved it so everyone in the room could clearly see it. Then he picked up the same blue rock he had used before with his other hand, extinguishing the fire he had summoned and placing the rock on top of his hand, right where the fire used to be. Again, the rock started gently glowing, with the whirlpool showing up again. “And this. Arkana.”
Everyone looked stunned at the swirling whirlpool inside the rock, surrounded by the gentle blue light. Then, slowly the light dimmed until everything inside the rock stopped and it went back to being just a simple blue rock.
“Amazing…” Adams said with a dazed expression, “There’s magic in this world…”
“Now hold on!” the Knight Captain quickly said, “You can’t just believe that that was magic! It could’ve just been some sort of flamethrower, and that rock could just very well be a nice lamp.”
Gruul laughed, shaking his head. “You no believe, huh,” he said as he went over to the oversized backpack and started pulling things out of it, from simple tools to more complicated ones and other large gem-like rocks, “Me fix tower. You believe.”
He passed a few tools to the other two ogres, who then picked up a few of the other rocks and they all went inside the generator and started working as Adams simply stood on the side, watching with open eyes their every move.
* * *
At the gates of Porta Paradisi base were standing a large group of Knights and even a few common soldiers as they all watched at the still Da’Nuhl, who in turn was looking back at Jeong-Hwa. People couldn’t see his expression since he was covered from head to toe, but that didn’t stop Jeong-Hwa from keeping a hawk-like expression on her face as she noticed every detail on his helmet, his weapons and even the shape of his boots.
Everyone had been standing quietly for a while. “So um…” Da’Nuhl said to Jeong-Hwa with an awkward tone of voice, “Nice base you have here…”
“Is that a threat, Commander?” she responded with a glare of her own at Da’Nuhl, with every other Knight around her gripping their weapons harder, ready to act on her orders.
“Oh! No, no! Nothing of the sorts!” he quickly responded, lifting a hand up, “I just felt somewhat awkward with the silence and the glaring is all.”
Jeong-Hwa humphed, crossing her arms under her chest. “We still don’t know anything about you or your people. However, you already know the world that we come from.”
Da’Nuhl chuckled. “Yes that is true, we’ve been able to gather some information.”
“And how did you do that? All of my teams are closely watched over, and the only other people that have left this base went in the almost completely opposite direction from where you came from,” Jeong-Hwa said with the same glare.
“Well…” Da’Nuhl trailed off, “Lets just say that we have our means.”
“Your means, huh,” Jeong-Hwa continued, her glare growing even stronger, “I hope those ‘means’ don’t include something like kidnapping and torturing our people.”
“What?! No! Nothing like that!” Da’Nuhl responded, taken aback by that suggestion, “We just—” he paused for a second, calming himself, “I can’t really tell you right now… sorry.”
Jeong-Hwa scoffed, and then kept quiet for a moment, and Da’Nuhl did the same. She turned her eyes to look at the strange rifle-like weapon, and looked at it for a moment. “So what is that thing? It looks like a rifle, but I don’t see any of the important bits that would make it one.”
Da’Nuhl lifted the rifle-like weapon slightly, and contemplated on it. “So you’re curious, huh. I see that your soldiers also carry similar things, so I figured you knew what it was.”
“Like I said, it looks like one, but I don’t see a trigger, a magazine, not even a hole for the bullets to come out of. Is it supposed to be a gift or a decoration?” Jeong-Hwa said, tilting her head from one side to the other as she tried to look better at the details on the weapon.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“This is one of the newest creations for the Republic’s army. You call it a rifle, but I see it as nothing more than an advanced staff. See this piece here?” Da’Nuhl said as he pointed at the tip of the rifle, where the hole would have been, which had a red jewel stuck there. “This is an Arkana Fire Amplifier. It helps people’s magic increase in firepower, precision, distance, and efficiency to the point of a very powerful mage without having to train for decades upon decades. Truly a fearsome weapon, and a threat for those old fashioned fellows that stick to the old ways.”
“Magic? Arkana?” Jeong-Hwa asked, raising an eyebrow on her confused expression. “What are you talking about?”
Da’Nuhl turned to look at her for a second, then looked at the other people surrounding her, as some of the Knights were murmuring to themselves, wondering about the same thing she had asked about.
“Right,” he said, scratching one of the horns on his helmet, “I forgot that the engineers said this could be new to your people.”
“Maybe…” one of the Knights at the side said, making Jeong-Hwa turn to look at him, “When he says magic, he actually means science? Or technology?”
“Aha!” Jeong-Hwa exclaimed in realization, “So that’s what you meant.”
Da’Nuhl awkwardly chuckled, “Yes… I guess you could say that… However…” he continued as he lowered his voice, “Magic is not technology or science, it’s something that most beings carry in their body. Like, for example, I can do magic without this staff.”
“What?” Jeong-Hwa responded, furrowing her eyebrows as the same confused expression from before took place.
“Yes, I can show you if you want to see,” Da’Nuhl said with a nonchalant tone of voice, as if this was the most natural of things.
“Okay then…” Jeong-Hwa responded, her tone of voice doubtful of what he had said.
“Don’t get scared or shoot me, alright?” Da’Nuhl said with a chuckle before turning to look at the open, dry field beyond the base’s gates.
He put the rifle staff to the side, letting it hang by the strap holding it, he then lifted his arm, stretching it forward, and pointed with his index finger. Jeong-Hwa looked on with an eyebrow raised, and everyone else seemed to almost lean forward, trying to have a better look at what Da’Nuhl was doing. Suddenly, from the top of his finger, a red fireball appeared. Jeong-Hwa raised her eyebrows in surprise, and a few people gasped.
The small fireball then quickly flew off from his finger, landing a few yards away on the ground, creating a tiny explosion that barely lifted the dirt off the ground, and leaving just a small black mark on it.
Without turning to look back at the people, Da’Nuhl chuckled slightly. “Sorry if it wasn’t too impressive, fire magic is not really my forte,” he said, grabbing the rifle-staff and pointing it forward, just like someone would with any common rifle. “But this staff here, it makes it so I can do what even some the greatest mages can.”
Without waiting for anyone to react, the red jewel at the rifle-staff’s end glowed red, and from in front of it, a red circle with intricate patterns quickly formed, creating a loud exploding sound as if an actual rifle had been fired. The circle quickly disappeared just as fast as it had formed, appearing instantly again some distance away—much further away from where Da’Nuhl had thrown his small fireball. From the circle an intense white line was fired, landing on ground, and creating a hole.
Everyone looked quietly at what had happened, with Da’Nuhl turning over to look back at the people as well. He scratched one of the horns on his helmet, putting his rifle to the side and chuckling as he did so. “Sorry if that didn’t look too impressive, this one’s designed for special operations where we don’t want to blow up a building, but the things that some other units carry can do that just as easily as a great mage.”
“That is… quite the interesting thing…” Jeong-Hwa said, as her eyebrows raised while she stared at the rifle in Da’Nuhl’s hand for a second before shifting her attention to the large scythe on his back. “What about that thing on your back? Does it do something special as well?”
Da’Nuhl half turned his face to look at the weapon. “This? No, this is just a simple artifact for close combat if it ever happens. I’m also pretty good with it, but not quite as good as some Almarians are.”
“Almarians?” asked Jeong-Hwa, titling slightly her head, “Is that another nation we should be aware of?”
Da’Nuhl shook his head, pulling the scythe from his back and nimbly unfolding it to show it to Jeong-Hwa. “No, they’re just part of our people. They’re the ones that created the whole fighting with a scythe thing. You can say they’re like a kind of people, like the… ‘goblin’ you know as Regis et al, or the ‘ogre’ engineers that went to fix your communications.”
“I see…” Jeong-Hwa responded as she had a contemplative expression on her face. “Then what about people like me? Or like the Knights and soldiers around here?”
Da’Nuhl folded and put away the weapon on his back, only to look slightly at the ground, thinking for a moment. “Your kind…”
The silence went on for a moment before Da’Nuhl raised his face to look at Jeong-Hwa again, but before he could say anything, a static sound came out of Jeong-Hwa’s armor, followed by a clear voice. “Commander? Come in, Commander.”
Jeong-Hwa raised her eyebrows in surprise. “This is Knight-Commander Han.”
“No way!” the voice on the other side responded, “They actually got it working!”
“Captain?” asked Jeong-Hwa.
“Yes, Commander?” responded the Knight Captain from the other side.
“Those ogres got the communication tower working?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows in slight disbelief.
“They did. Man, you’re not going to believe what they did and the stuff they pulled out. It was magic, like literal actual magic,” the Knight Captain said with enthusiasm, “I’ll go over to you and explain in more detail.”
“No need, Captain. I’ll go over to the tower. I still need to contact our Imperators after all,” she responded with a half smile on her face, turning over to look at Da’Nuhl.
“Then I guess I’ll wait for you here,” he said with a cheerful tone.
“No need, you can come with me. I think we can trust you a bit more,” she responded, turning around and walking back into the base. Da’Nuhl stood around for a moment, watching her back, before nodding slightly and following behind her.
* * *
Before Da’Nuhl went into the base with the group of ogres, somewhere north-west of Porta Paradisi, a shadow was hiding between the trees, jumping from one shade to another, trying not to make a sound or disturb the normal appearance of the forest as it quickly moved.
It didn’t take this figure long before they were close to the clearing that was created on the Battle of the Scorched Gate. They settled themselves under the shade of a tree and watched carefully, their figure unnaturally obscured, making it harder to see them among the many colors, shades and forms of the forest.
Their dark eyes settled on the base, where they saw the many towers, sentries and guards armed with strange weapons, all looking at the gates, where a strange horned person seemed to be standing, looking at a beautiful woman, who looked back with a ferocious glare.
The dark eyes of this figure suddenly widened and they prepared themselves to move out when this horned person turned around, and aimed a finger into the open field; however, whatever their aim was, was nowhere near close to where this figure was standing, so they calmed down and watched carefully at what was going on.
It seemed to be a simple demonstration, as the horned one shot randomly at the dry ground before turning around back to the guards and the woman.
This figure in the forest watched how the woman at the gate changed her attitude for seemingly no reason and invited the horned one into the base. Nothing of importance happened at the base for the time that this horned person went into the base, but the figure didn’t take their eyes off from the base, carefully watching all the movements that happened with the people moving around in it.
A few hours later, this shadowy figure was still keeping watch, but their expression had changed to one of first surprise and then anger as they finally saw the horned man come out, followed by a group of what could only be Drokanian Ogres.
This figure pulled out a piece of paper and wrote things on it in a language that only they could understand. It was quickly done and then—as the horned one and the ogres started moving out of the base—this figure glared at the base, before turning back into the forest, quickly jumping from tree to tree, shade to shade, until they were well away from the base, quickly going north, silently leaving the place just as they had come.