Once again wearing his duster, Salazar unfolded a picnic blanket-sized sheet of yellowed paper covered in brownish markings, like a hundred tiny coffee mugs had been overturned onto it all at once. In terms of promised schematics, however, it was blank.
Mark looked the paper over. “So, is it invisible ink, or…?”
Quet tapped the paper with the tip of her shoe. The markings all glowed with the trademark scintillating rainbow light of the Down Below. After a second or two, a semi-opaque projection of the castle appeared on top of the paper, coming up to Horan’s neck.
Mark nodded. “...Should’ve expected that, actually.”
Quet leaned forward and inspected the markings on the paper. “Fascinating script. I’d love to unravel how it works at some point.” She looked up at Salazar. “Yo, can I borrow the paper when we’re done?”
Salazar shrugged. “I guess, sure. So, what exactly are you people trying to do? Just… kill Yang?”
“No.” Xiao scooted forward. “We’re just getting her out of the castle. That was our deal. No death.” He looked Salazar in the eye. “You got that? I don’t really have anything to hold over you in this regard, but I’m just asking you to not kill her. Just… setting some ground rules.”
Salazar looked at Xiao for a moment before speaking. “You, uh, you got it. Also, I feel like you’ve been through a whole thing with these people. Should I be in the loop on all this? Would that be useful for this plan?”
Horan shook his head. “Nah, you’re good. Personal stuff.”
“Okay, just making sure.” Salazar held a finger outward so that it was inside the main ‘trunk’ of the castle, near the ground. After a second, the glyphs on the paper pulsed with greater brightness and the projection doubled in size, zooming in on the area that Salazar had pointed to. “You said the King’s bringing in people of his own? Well, they’ll have to enter here, at the only entrance. And the fact that we’ll have to enter the castle from the air when it really wasn’t built for that is, uh… another matter.”
“I’m sure I can manage,” said Omet. “Probably gonna end up doing it by accident.”
Mark nodded. “Figure out how to stop the King’s guys from progressing any further inside than necessary, got it.” He squinted and thought he could make out the interior of the castle through its walls. “Lots of staircases. Pretty simple choke point.”
“Yup. But the main thing we should do about them is just… be fast. They can’t become a problem if we’re gone before they arrive.” Salazar made a pinching gesture, which zoomed the projection back out to normal size. He then zoomed back in on a ‘branch’ of the castle nestled between numerous additional branches, held aloft only by the hallways that connected them to the rest of the castle.
The room in question that Salazar was focusing on was shaped like an upside-down wedding cake and barely visible through the tangle of other offshoots, only easily seen through a clear patch directly above it.
“This here is the Locus containment room, it’s where they keep this giant ball of magic whatever, it’s in control of maintaining the Ley Lines. If that giant blue lightning guy is gonna be anywhere and able to zap people through the lines, he’ll be here.”
“Oh yeah, I can manage that.” Waia reached up and pointed down at the room from the open space up above. “Just jump down there, take him out. Easy.”
Xiao nodded. “But what if Yang sees that coming? Yang’s smart. That seems like an obvious option, and we won’t exactly be making the quietest entrance. The locust, or whatever it was, might be able to move.”
Mark nodded in assent. “What else is there? Where might Yang be in particular?”
“Hmm…” Salazar zoomed in on a shorter branch, not far from where the main trunk of the castle began to split off. “There’s a ‘diplomatic guest room’ here. Yang doesn’t really have a reason to stay anywhere in particular, but I’m pretty sure that this is the only bedroom with beds that you can’t build a city block on.”
“Alright, it’s something.” Mark gauged the distance between the room Salazar had pointed out and the Locus room. Not far. “But if she plans for that? She could hole up in the containment room, use Orsinus for protection.”
Quet nodded. “And she won’t just hide in another part of the castle. Then we’d just have Orsinus to ourselves, right? Give me a few days with him and the Locus, and I could probably… do something with it. I didn’t think that far ahead, I just know there’s something awesome to be done with that.”
Horan examined the projection. “...How about we split the difference? Some of us go to Orsinus to take him out of the fight, the rest of us go to where Yang might be and see if we can hunt her down? If she’s there, we can take her out pretty easy and leave before the King’s mooks show up. If she’s with Orsinus, whoever we send can just deal with her there while the rest hold off the reinforcements? One’s better than the other, but either way, she doesn’t have the chance to escape and regroup.”
Mark grinned. “I’m liking that. Who’s up for the Orsinus team?”
Waia raised her hand. “Dibs. Just me. I’ve got this.”
“Wha- Just you?” Mark looked around at the others, then back at Waia. “That’s dumb. Really dumb.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“You’ll be the dumb one when whoever I get paired up with has to carefully slide down this thing’s back after me, even though I already jumped off and punched through the roof like a superhero. Just you wait. While you’re waiting, maybe also go get a red nose and rainbow wig for yourself. You’ll be needing them.”
Mark looked away. “Okay then. Guess you’ll manage. I suppose it might be good for the rest of us to focus on the bottom. We can hold off the reinforcements if need be, or fan out to track Yang down if we need to.”
Waia pumped her fist. “Oh, this is gonna be sweet.”
Salazar touched the paper and the projection faded, bringing the light in the markings with it. “Alright, that’s a plan.” He got to his feet. “Now if you don’t mind, I have an apartment that needs clea-”
Waia grabbed him by the arm. “You said you would help. Showing us some blueprints isn’t helping. You can’t do some token little gesture and act like you did your part. If you’re too scared to follow through on your promise, then I’ll make you.”
Salazar looked down at where his arm had been grabbed, then up at Waia, then back down. “So, are you always this… much? Because I feel like you might be a bit of a, uh, spotted q’Tra. Regarding the rest of this little group y’all’ve got going.”
“No, no,” piped up Xiao, “that’s me. She’s cool. I guess. I dunno, we don’t really know each other outside of this context.” He stepped back and rubbed his shoulder. “I-I’m just saying words again, I’m sorry.”
Waia pulled Salazar back onto the deck. “You’re finishing this. You’re not happy now, but this will all be for the best when we’re through. Okay, I’m starting to sound like a dictator in a bad sci-fi movie, but I’m not changing my mind.”
Salazar sat down in a huff. “You people really have lost your minds.”
“And none of us are denying that at this point.” Omet got up and headed back to the command room. “Guess it’s time to get to work.”
Once the Potirangi started moving again, Salazar kept his eyes trained on his apartment complex, floating in a gray void. He looked over at Waia, who was standing a few feet away. “So, you’re forcing me into this because… Why, exactly? You don’t seem the type to really need someone like me for this.”
“I didn’t force you into anything,” said Waia. “You said you’d help, didn’t you? Any job worth doing is worth doing right. Might be hard to stay on track, but I’m not a life coach. I’m a fighter. I just figured that the guy who used to be trying to maintain law and order in a whole city might know something about that. Or did all that work make you soft somehow?”
Salazar watched his home fade into the miasma of ambient magic. “What, are you some kind of cop? For Primoi? Is that a thing? I ain’t telling-” He stopped. “Sorry about the accent again. It happens sometimes. I don’t mean for it to do that.”
Waia snorted. “What, because it’s ‘uncivilized’? Not a fan of where you’re from?”
“Hey, don’t-”
Waia cut him off. “I’m not calling you out. There’s a lot we’ve both got between us, actually. You wanna make something new for yourself, that’s fine. But the thing is, if you care about whatever it is you’ve made for yourself, you gotta do everything you can to keep it. Otherwise, you never deserved to have it in the first place. You care about your old job, don’t you? About making sure Tragnil was a safe place to live?”
“...Meh. It wasn’t in the best shape when I got here, even. I tried to set things right for the Leviathan Council, give Tragnil some of that old Ka-Sala justice, but… I guess there was a reason why I gave up on this place so easily, why I kept my Homeland Coat and just put the stripes on it… I was just tired of ramming my head into a brick wall.”
“Well…” Waia turned around and leaned against the rim, looking out at Tragnil’s skyline as they passed back through the barrier. “No council to appease, and an easy target to blame for all the bad stuff. Let’s call this a fresh start.”
-
Ligivul perched on top of a tent pole like a weathervane, listening to the steadily approaching noise while the monsters below scurried around like ants. She heard the rustle of what sounded like a receding tide, which grew in volume for a few seconds before stopping, then the sound of a deep boom that seemed to have more echo than proper sound. After a moment, the sound of rushing water came back, and the cycle began again.
The sound had been reverberating throughout the camp for hours, but Ligivul had only climbed up to the highest point she could find a few minutes ago. She had thought she had seen… There.
When the sound of water came, a dim rainbow glow appeared in the distance. Hard to make out at first, it steadily expanded and brightened until it formed a vast cloud on the horizon. And right before the sound reached its peak, Ligivul thought she could see a shape in the cloud. A fuzzy silhouette of something impossibly large, with one foot raised in the air. Then the sound stopped and the cloud vanished. But a moment later came the boom, and with it was an explosion of light high in the air, like the world’s biggest, most colorful smoke bomb had gone off on the back of whatever it was that was approaching.
Over the course of the next thirty minutes or so, the monsters on the ground frantically cleaned up their camp, polished their equipment, and got into line. Right around when they were done, Ligivul looked up and finally got a good look at what was approaching.
Ten enormous legs, each wide enough at the base to squash the entire camp, supported a mottled gray, headless, city-sized torso. Dozens upon dozens of chimney-esque tubes sprouted up from the top of the monster down to its feet, like the entire beast had stalagmites forming on its entire body. Nestled between the tubes was a small fortress, shaped out of the rock-hard skin of the creature and sized to accommodate beings that easily towered over the camp themselves.
As the creature slowly raised its legs, the air around it lit up as the ambient magic around it was sucked in through the tubes, creating the painfully bright cloud of light that turned the entire beast into a stark silhouette against the riot of colors. When the leg was brought down, the magic was expelled in a violent outburst once again, lighting up what little landscape was visible as if a sun had suddenly appeared.
Ligivul stared at the approaching monolith of a creature in awe for a good few minutes as it inexorably plodded towards the camp, its footsteps beginning to create noticeable tremors in the ground that nearly knocked Ligivul off of her perch.
Ligivul slid back down to the ground and ran for the stable. She unhitched the bird creature she had been given to scout out the ruins and took off right outside, the resulting wind from the creature’s flapping knocking over the stable tent. She tried to fly up to it, but it was like the beast was moving backwards in tandem with her. How big was this thing?
Eventually she made it and flew up to the monster’s back, gliding between skyscraper-sized towers raised up miles from the ground. Tens of thousands of soldiers moved up and down the streets and catwalks connecting the layers of urban sprawl on the monster’s back. Near the top of the hill formed by the layered buildings was what looked like a palatial complex flying banners that depicted two green eyes on a black background. That’d do it, then. This was the real army.