I cock my head at the strange comment, have these knights not seen magic before? No, they must have. Maybe they haven’t seen plasma used like that before?
I clear my throat and point my hand upwards, as I do I gather mana in my palm and begin to transmute it to plasma. The energy crackles and arcs upwards, as the plasma forms and begins crackling I see the knights turn to each other again, I can hear some of the things that they whisper to each other this time as I manage to hear some things about “Implants” and “Old-world technology”.
As they’re whispering I see another one of the grotesque creatures walk up behind them and wail, and as it wails it releases a glob of substance from its mouth and I manage to yell, “DROP!”
One of the knights lowers to the ground in time, but the other is smacked in the back of the head by the glob. As he’s hit by it he curses about something called “RADs” and turns to me, “Why the hell didn’t you just say duck?”
I give him a confused look and say, “Isn’t that an animal here?” I shake my head and continue, “Sorry, the language enchantment must be acting up.”
The knight just curses and snaps around to start attacking it with its laser rifle. I rack my brain for an explanation and I’m returned with two different definitions for the one word, how strange. As I’m looking at various definitions in my head the other knight flips around and begins firing his laser rifle, as the knights shoot I activate my mana sight. The first thing I notice is that the strange substance that the Centaur fired was packed to the brim with mana and is eating away at the back of the knight’s helmet. I hold my palm out and gather the mana from the substance to my palm, and as I do this I attempt to transmute it into one of the energy bolts that the knights are firing.
The energy bolts that they’re firing out of their “Plasma Rifles” don’t appear to be transmuted, which is peculiar. The knights also don’t appear to be mages, which is even more intriguing. I mostly manage to create the bolt of plasma, but it has difficulties staying intact so I have to manually hold it together with my influence over it. I charge it as densely as I possibly can and launch it at the Centaur, it does hit but the shot spreads out some as it exits my range of influence. It scorches the skin of the Centaur and the abomination releases a horrible gurgling sound. The knights seem surprised by the bolt I fire but continue shooting.
It’s currently assailing one of the knights with the tendrils that are coming from its mouth, and they’re whipping the knight's armor, but he simply grabs the tendrils and pulls. The pulling is accompanied by both a ripping sound and wailing from the creature. I wince at the tearing sound but regain my composure. As the knight fully tears the tendrils out he pummels the creature to the ground and it falls limp.
I prepare to congratulate the knights, but I hear more gurgling. As I hear this I say, “How many of these damn things are there?”
The knight whose hands aren’t covered in gore turns and says, “These things always come in large groups, I’d say that it would be wise to get out of here, but we still have a mission to complete.”
I tilt my head and ask, “Mission? Is it really important enough for this to be worth it?”
The knight whose hands are covered in gore nods and says, “This shouldn't be too difficult to handle, in fact, there should be some super-” As he’s about to finish his sentence he curses and turns to his partner, “If the super mutants here were friendly, why would they have an extremely large group of Centaurs on display?”
After a moment of silence, the other knight simply shakes his head and mutters, “Fuck.”
As the knight curses multiple Centaurs around the corner, one of them is much larger than the other. The knights shake their heads and say, “We’re withdrawing, if we don’t we’re going to have to deal with bad information and an evolved Centaur.”
He straightens his hand and points in a direction, and both of them begin moving that way backward while shooting the Centaurs. All the Centaurs begin firing globs of substance, a few are headed in my direction so I move out of the way, though as the globs hit the ground they splatter, and bits of fluid skim my pants, any part that makes contact is immediately dissolved. I vigorously shake my leg to get the rest of the fluid off.
I turn over to look at the knights and they appear much worse off, their armor is still holding on though it looks like it’s in terrible condition. The Centaurs release another volley, but this time I activate my mana sight and attempt to manipulate the globs. I manipulate the mana in the globs so that they stop completely, and as I do I transmute the radiation into a blanket of plasma. I then push it toward the large Centaur and cover it which results in it shrieking and a horrible smell filling the air as its flesh burns. I gag and lose focus which causes the blanket of plasma to dissipate back into mana.
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The “Evolved” Centaur continues pushing forward, but it has a significant limp now. The knights mutter and turn to begin running, and I follow them, I remain pointed backward so that I can deflect any globs coming in our direction. I only have to redirect one more volley, though my work was much sloppier this time since I am moving and some of the spit hits their armor, they don’t pay the stuff that landed on them much mind as they are currently beating down a Centaur that got behind us. It doesn’t take long for us to get to a partially broken barrier, and thankfully the creatures stopped following us due to us running much faster than their… arms could effectively carry them. The barrier appears to be made of some sort of woven metal.
We squeeze through, the knights don’t have any issues whatsoever as the barrier seems to move easily where it’s broken. I push through with no issues whatsoever and look to the knights as they’ve stopped walking after going through the barrier.
One of the knights begins talking, “Okay, now that we’re out of all that would you mind telling us where exactly you came from and what exactly you were doing back there? Also, how are you not suffering the normal effects of radiation exposure? That area was heavily irradiated.”
As the knight talks to me, I cock my head. The word radiation is translated strangely, even more so than many of the other words that have been used, as it almost translates as a formal way of saying mana.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts and respond, “I was transmuting mana- err- radiation back there into plasma, it was rather easy due to how much there was,” I pause for a moment, these knights clearly aren’t very educated in magic and things of that sort.
It also probably wouldn’t be wise to share the fact I came from a different dimension. As I’m thinking I realize the knights are getting impatient, so I just blurt out, “And on the topic of where I came from, I… came from a faraway place?”
The knight sighs and responds, “That sounded more like a question than an answer, but I’ll take it out of courtesy, you did help us. Though you did talk about teleportation and a “language enchantment” earlier, what was that about?”
I prepare to say something but pause again, these knights seem clueless about what should be common concepts. Have they never met or heard about a wizard? Are they like dwarves and fully isolate themselves? No, if they were like dwarves they would have shooed me away already. I think for a few more moments before something dawns on me as a possibility. Are there no wizards at all? I shake my head, that would be preposterous! This world is extremely mana-dense, there has to be some wizards.
I smile and start talking, I’m sure they won’t get aggressive if I tell them anything, they may just be a bit confused, “I’m assuming you already know what teleportation is considering you used the term, which is a bit curious considering it’s clear you two don’t know what magic is. I got here via the means of a new ritual I discovered, it involved an extreme amount of mana- err, no- radiation it pulled quite a bit from those strange suits of armor that both of you are wearing.”
The two knights look at each other, they shrug as they do. They then look back at me, one of them says, “Continue.”
I cock an eyebrow and continue speaking, “Now, the language enchantment, that is much more complicated. I’m not entirely sure how it works, I got it from a church official during a trip while I was still pursuing a higher education. I have tried to figure out how it works, but I have zero clue, probably some divine nonsense.”
The knights sigh and turn to each other again, this time they do whisper, but I can hear it, they say, “I’m pretty sure this guy is a nutjob.”
“Yeah, but even if he isn’t and he can actually use magic, I do not want to do all the paperwork for that.”
“Yeah, me neither, how about we just give him some caps and send him on his merry way?”
“I have no objections to that.”
Both of the knights turn to me and both pull out a small handful of round metal objects, they combine their handfuls and offer them to me. I look at them confused and ask, “What are these?”
The knight currently handling the handful releases a long-suffering sigh and says, “These are caps, they came from the top of a Nuka-Cola or Sunset Sasparilla bottle, and they can be used as money throughout the wasteland. Please take them and leave us be, you can find civilization by walking east of here.”
The other knight pulls out something I actually recognize, a compass, and he orients himself and says, “Now this is definitely skewed due to me wearing a suit of power armor, but I’m pointing in the direction you should walk.”
I take the caps from the other knight's hands and bow, as I do I say, “Alright then, good knights, I will be on my way. Though I do have a question, what... uhh... one moment,” I look down and rack my brains for a word that would be the equivalent of a knight’s house, but the closest thing I can muster up is the word group, I stand back up straight and continue, “What group are you knights part of?”
The knight who still has the compass in his hands responds, “We’re part of the Brotherhood of Steel, now we would love to talk more, but we have to get going.”
As the Brotherhood of Steel Knight finishes speaking he begins walking off, they must really be in a rush. As they leave I begin walking in the direction that the knight with the compass pointed me in. I’m starting to get a little thirsty, but I’m sure the town that they pointed me to shouldn’t be very far away. As I walk I begin sorting through the caps that the knights ever so graciously provided me I find one with a blue design on the bottom, I separate it from the others and continue sorting. Sorting through these caps should keep me occupied for long enough, right?