“Meladee! Eva!” Camellia felt her face light up. She pushed herself out of Florian’s chair and rounded the desk. She reached Meladee and gave her a hug, followed by a hug for Eva. “I’ve really missed you guys.”
“We promised you visits, and visits is what you’ll get.” Meladee glanced around the office.
Camellia didn’t think Meladee would find anything different. Everything was the same. Florian had the same wooden desk. He had the same shelves, with only a few new books. He had a couple of chairs, and the restored wooden bench, with outdoor shoes tucked beneath the seat. Last but not least, he kept the same organized but cluttered filing system, meaning he kept a lot of things on his desk at once, within easy reach.
Meladee pointed to a shelf. “Hey a picture of you and Florian.”
Camellia smiled and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “Yes. I put it there.”
“In his office,” Eva added.
“So, how’s life for you?” Meladee took a seat on the old wooden bench.
Camellia returned to Florian’s chair. “Aside from being in the middle of a war, I’m good.”
Meladee asked, “So, the whole kid having thing doesn’t suck?”
“It does not suck.” Camellia shifted in the chair. “I don’t mind at all.”
“Yeah, but you’re a dhampir.” Meladee frowned and picked lint from her shirt.
“It also does not suck during the day. At least, not yet.” Camellia folded her hands in her lap. “Later, I might change my mind. I can let you know.”
“Nah, that’s fine. Unless you want to complain. Then, I’m all ears.” Meladee stared at the ceiling.
Camellia tried to catch Meladee’s eyes but just couldn’t manage. She glanced at Eva, who still stood.
“Want to sit?” Camellia gestured to one of two chairs across the desk.
“No,” Eva said.
Meladee shrugged. “I don’t know what’s up with her. Stiffer than usual.”
Camellia frowned. “Oh.”
Eva looked away from both of them and seemed to read titles on Florian’s shelf.
Meladee sighed. “Must be the war. And, we might not even survive this one. Benham wants to seize the day and get married.”
“Oh, that’s wonder…” Camellia let the sentiment trail off.
Meladee glared. “I’m all for seizing the moment, but like that? No offense, but you don’t know if your kid will have to live in a Volanter dystopia.”
“I don’t…” Camellia tapped Florian’s desk and gazed at his arrangement of files. She saw many pictures of Volanter artifacts scattered over the wood.
Meladee leaned back against the bench and put her hands behind her head. “Forget I said that. The Volanter might usher in a new age where everyone is happy. Then, I’ll have a family with Benham and wonder why I resisted it for so long.”
Eva shook her head slow. “There won’t be a new age of happiness and peace. But, I would like for both you and Camellia to reproduce in a timely manner, as I will need new friends when you’re dead and gone.”
Camellia smiled wide.
Meladee laughed. “What? What the hell was that? What are you going to do? Follow our family lines?”
Eva nodded once. “Something like that.” She crossed the small office and finally sat in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. “I would like to add the offspring of other friends to my plans, but it seems that certain individuals in our acquaintance do not intend to have children.”
Meladee’s mouth dropped open. “Who are you talking about?”
Camellia put a finger to her lips. “Let it be.”
Meladee gestured to Eva. “Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think?”
Eva raised an eyebrow.
Meladee rose from the bench and plopped into the chair next to Eva. They all sat around the desk.
Meladee nudged a file out of her way and propped her elbow on the desk’s edge. “I’ll get to it in my own time.”
Eva shook her head. “Laugh about it you two. You don’t have a limitless lifespan.” Eva’s voice held an edge of sadness.
Camellia felt the amusement fall off her face. “It’ll be alright, Eva. There will be androids and more organic people. And, we’re not going anywhere soon.”
“Shit,” Meladee said. “I really…”
Florian’s door burst open. It wasn’t Florian but a historian by the name of Igon.
“The three of you need to go to the basement now. The Volanter are attacking again.” He waved them towards the door.
Camellia pushed back her chair and struggled to her feet. She grabbed the desk’s corner, rounded it, and hurried for the door. “What about Florian?”
“He’s in the museum, probably headed for the basement. I’m supposed to watch you. Come on.”
“Watch me?” Camellia questioned, but she let Igon take her along.
She glanced back. Meladee and Eva lagged behind.
“Aren’t you coming?” Camellia asked.
Meladee rubbed the back of her neck and shot a pleading look Eva’s way. “I don’t know if I can. I’m a mage, and I think Eva’s going to hold me accountable.”
“You’re right,” Eva said.
“Guess we’ll take your shuttle up then.”
Eva swore in Lurrien. “No, we can’t. I have no weapons aboard.”
“Basement?” Camellia asked, as Igon gently nudged her down the hall.
Eva looked at the front door. Then, she glanced down the hall to the stairwell entrance. “Basement for now. We’ll keep our coms open in case we can help.”
Meladee punched the air. “Yes!”
Rooks knew the Volanter would bring more ships the second time. She was right. The Volanter upped their fleet from five to twenty – only five of the ships were the smaller class. The rest loomed, large as Fauchard.
Rooks thought it was lucky then that the Scaldin brought twenty ships. She added those twenty ships to her six. They outnumbered the Volanter by one, and they matched the Volanter for size too. With so many arcanes and mages aboard, Rooks thought they might have a better advantage than the first time.
“They must be so annoyed with us.” Rooks gripped the rail and viewed the rows of Volanter.
The ships stacked in columns of three and stretched nine ships wide at the center row. The upper and lower rows spanned eight.
Rooks had enough ships to position them in a semi-circle ahead of Iruedim, blocking access to the planet and the wormhole as well. She opted for two staggered rows.
“This is going to be a fire-fight. Our ships and mages against theirs. We’ll see if they release those riders. Until they do, don’t send out our fighters.” Rooks looked between windshield and her screen.
So far, they just faced one. No one fired, and no one released the mages.
“Let’s fire first,” Rooks said. “Fauchard, Bardiche, Ranseur – fire all weapons. Mages, all ships – Target the Volanter forerunners.”
Rooks watched as summons popped into space, and fire crackers defied logic. They sped through the vacuum, burning bright. A large version of the shockwave spell tore at a Volanter’s underside.
The Volanter moved closer.
Rooks crossed her arms. “They don’t like that. They want to be too close for us to use it.” Rooks did not order her fleet to back up. She couldn’t move if she wanted to keep space slag off of Iruedim. Her ships had to hold their line.
Riders sped from the Volanter bays.
“That’s a problem,” Inez said.
“Can you shockwave them?” Rooks’ eyes darted to Inez.
She shook her head. “They moved too close.”
“I assumed as much. Release fighters. Lurriens. Any small vessels we have, attack the Volanter riders.”
An alarm blared in their quarters, and Pan couldn’t think straight. Between buzzes, the intercom called for all hands to battle stations. The Volanter had arrived.
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Pan pressed her hands over her ears. Sotir said something to her, about making his way to the bridge. Pan frowned. She couldn’t have that. Who would stick with Aria?
Aria hurried for the door, probably to hide in her own small quarters.
Pan grabbed Aria by the arm and pushed Aria into Sotir. “Watch her!”
Anger flashed across Aria’s face, as she stumbled.
Sotir dropped his staff and caught Aria. “Pan! Why?”
“Just stay together.” Pan twisted the lock on their door and flung it open.
“Why should I have to watch her?” Sotir called again.
“Just. Stay. Together.” With that, Pan turned and ran into the hall.
She glanced at her bracelet. The pictures bobbed and jangled, but she saw the image of the bridge. It started to snake around her wrist. She let it. Pan conjured the portal circle, ran through, and landed on the dais beside Alban.
“Ah good. I was about to call you. Where’s Sotir?”
Pan stared out the view. “Busy.” Outside, she saw Volanter, not more than she could count, but more than she should count in an emergency situation. “How many of them are there?”
Alban raised his hand and dropped it onto her shoulder. “Not too many. A little more than arrived during the first encounter. They’re testing Iruedim and getting a feel for what we’re capable of. Rooks defeated the scouts, so they sent more this time. But, we’ve got more ships, more arcanes, and more mages.”
“So, next time they’ll send even more,” Pan said.
“Probably. Now, if you would call your familiar.” Alban backed away and watched her with expectation.
Pan raised her hand to trace the familiar circle.
“By the way, I’ll expect you to ride with it. Sotir says that you are just as much a rider as they are.” Alban nodded out the view.
Pan glared. Her hand hovered in the air, pointing at nothing.
“Did you think I didn’t know? You love your little games, but we’re not playing this one. I know you’re a rider – now use that ability to its fullest.” Alban pointed outside. “Go.”
Pan focused on empty airspace in the bridge, just above the crew pit. With her long hovering pointer finger, she traced the path of the ring, and the runes appeared where her hand flowed. Pan conjured the circle for her familiar. In a stream of smoke, the dragon exited and perched on the edge of the dais. Pan hurried to its side.
Over her shoulder, she glared. “I want some cake waiting for me.”
“That all? Consider it done.” Alban gestured her out.
Pan’s eyes darted around the bridge. She enjoyed the sensation of riding, but she didn’t want to ride, especially since it didn’t bode well for her future.
Alban didn’t know that. He thought it was a game. “Now, don’t you worry about the Ischyros. Or, your cake,” Alban said. “We’re one of the smaller ships here, so we’re just support.”
“What about my Sotir and Aria? All the rest of you?”
Alban kind of smiled. “We’ll be even safer than your cake.” Alban shooed her. “Ride that familiar.”
Pan stuck her fingers in the dragon’s fur. “You got the order for this?”
“Did I tell the navy that you’d be riding a dragon? Yes, I did. No need to worry about friendly fire. Did I ask for permission to send you out – No, I didn’t. The Volanter sent out their riders. So, go.” Alban leaned forward and gave her a hard stare.
“Good-bye.” Pan jumped atop the dragon. She grasped the feathery fur and laid low on its back.
The scale shield folded around her, leaving a tinted of view of the things outside. Pan glimpsed Alban’s wonder as he saw her familiar riding for the first time.
Pan hated to be watched. She conjured a portal to space and thanked the Mother Tree for the large forward window, which gave her plenty of space to choose from. As the dragon shot through the portal, Pan thought that maybe she shouldn’t thank the Mother Tree for so much. It belonged to the Voalnter, after all, but it belonged to her too.
The familiar gave Pan a ride through space that felt much safer than her first. She knew what to expect, but she also had a lot more ships on her side. Twenty Scaldin vessels and six Iruedians, not to mention the smaller vessels peppered throughout the battle, fighters mostly.
The mages, however, gave her the biggest boost in confidence. Every ship, Scaldin and Iruedian alike, carried more than fifty mages, as Iruedim had mages to spare. Their spellwork painted circles of light over the darkness of space, blotting out the galaxies in the distance.
Of course, Volanter spellwork also lit up the sky, and Pan headed for that.
Camouflaged as she and her dragon were, she began her involvement in secrecy. Pan watched the circles. One grew brighter, and its rays sparkled. Pan conjured a portal before it. The meteor shower that had been headed for a Scaldin ship sailed into the portal and out among the Volanter ships, hitting two hard in their flanks.
Pan smiled. She identified that circle as a Stolon creation because it had the pretty but not terribly useful rays.
A volley of magical energy passed between two ships. The Iruedian vessel’s shield lit up. The magic circle never became visible. The Volanter vessel also caught the magic on its shields, but the circle showed in stark, bright runes with each collision.
It occurred to Pan that Iruedian spells were designed to prevent counters. The circles didn’t stick around, and when they did, they were too complex to truly destroy.
Pan propped herself up and lifted her head. She watched three dual-ringed circles simmer into being. No Iruedian mage claimed them, so Pan did.
She opened three portals before the circles. She caught a blaze of magical fire, a sparking comet, and a spritz of something blue. All three sped through her portals and hit the Volanter ships.
The dragon laughed beneath Pan. She felt its back heave with the effort. Pan smiled. She got the timing just right. It was important to make sure no one could counter her. Though, she supposed that counters were an outdated tactic. Counters were not as possible in multi-ringed spells. Perhaps, that was the whole reason for the rays. They too could not be countered with precision.
To counter a circle, another caster had to cast the opposing circle atop it, creating a continuous line of symbols, with no lose ends, effectively turning the circle into a scribble. If the Volanters weren’t practiced with the single ringed circles. They probably weren’t practiced in counters.
The dragon landed atop a Volanter warship and pulled at a gun. Pan peered around its head and watched as the dragon’s claws grasped the gun and jiggled it back and forth.
Where they found one gun, they could probably find more.
Pan twisted inside the dragon’s scale shield. She looked left, then right, and finally back. Her eyes went wide. She conjured a portal just in time to catch a shot from a gun. She sent that shot back into the gun itself because that was the only place she could sight quick enough.
The explosion was silent, but it rocked the ship. Her familiar took off, with the other gun in hand.
Of course, the ship shot at them. The familiar dodged most of the shots, but Pan caught two with a quick-cast shield. Shields weren’t Pan’s favorite. They felt like stiff glue atop her skin, but she felt accomplished to know the spell anyway.
As the dragon flew up, Pan stared down. She cast the telekinesis circle, letting it ring the whole ship. She pulled that ship up and into another. The resulting explosion threw Pan and her dragon back towards the Iruedian side of the battle, end over end.
The dragon didn’t try to stop. It made a loop and flew through the remainder of the shockwave as it returned to the fray.
“I’d love to say we just took out two ships, but they seem fine.” Pan’s voice sounded odd in the scaled enclosure.
The two large ships conjured shields and pulled away from each other. Small fires blazed on the underside of one and the top of the other. The fires quickly winked out, with no oxygen to feed on. They weren’t magical in nature.
Small ships whizzed Pan’s way. Each possessed a face, and Pan realized they were not ships at all. She’d found the riders.
Her dragon growled. Pan heard only a murmur, but she felt its chest rumble through its feathered back.
Pan studied the other familiars. One had wings and the body of a frog. A green enclosure encased a Volanter arcane. Another of the familiars had tight fluttering wings and a small body. Its feathers possessed an iridescence that shimmered in the firelight of the battle. It was a tiny bird that housed its arcane. The last of the familiars was still too far off for Pan to recognize.
The dragon roared, a useless thing to do in the quiet of space, but Pan could feel his back arch where the sound should have been.
“They’re a winged frog and small-bodied bird. You can handle them.”
The winged bird aimed a long-pointed beak for Pan’s dragon. Her dragon performed a roll and dodged the bird. As the bird sailed past, Pan’s dragon flew claws first into the frog.
The hum of a circle seemed to permeate the battle space. Pan couldn’t hear it, but she could feel vibrations. She looked up and saw the circle. A single ring flowed around her, containing complicated runes.
Bract. They’ll be slow.
Pan portaled the ring away by nesting two portals together. One she wrapped around her and her dragon. It circled back on itself and left them in place. The second portal ringed the outside of the Bract spell. It led somewhere else.
Pan smiled as the Bract ring finished, and the bird familiar shattered. Bits and pieces of bird and Volanter floated through the void.
Pan’s mouth fell open. I need to learn that one. Smithereens. That’s what Pan would call it.
Meanwhile, Pan’s dragon had been busy. Pan lay flat and looked to their frog opponent. Bits and pieces of frog and Volanter floated ahead. She couldn’t glimpse her dragon’s claws, but she felt all four would be coated in blood.
Pan pet her dragon’s back. “Good familiar.” Ruthless, that was the key.
The dragon dipped through the battlefield, and Pan got a view of the final rider. Their familiar best resembled a furred, mountain animal, with stubby legs. On Scaldigir, they called them Eidos and used them as rides.
Pan had to admit she didn’t expect much. Neither did her dragon.
It flew low; then sped upwards, claws and teeth first. Pan starred at the Eidos’ furry underside. The Eidos got closer. Pan braced herself and squinted against what she thought would be a lot of blood.
A collision jarred them, and Pan emitted an oof. They’d hit a shield, and its rings rotated.
“Wonderful. Rhizo.”
Pan spotted the extra runes. They floated in space. She knew all of them and their counters. So, within her mind’s eye, she drew the counters atop those floating runes. All fizzled out.
Pan laughed.
The rotating ring died with nothing to pull in.
It seemed that counters were not so limited after all, and if Pan was the only one who knew them, she could navigate a battlefield by sabotaging everyone’s circles. There was a kind of joy to it. Of course, she didn’t know all her counters or all the runes.
Pan’s dragon fled and put some distance between them and the Rhizo, with the Eidos familiar.
A new rotating circle traced lines of light across the sky. Its runes floated just behind, and Pan only recognized one. She countered it, but the effect of the circle burst forth. She’d countered a decoy rune or one useful later in the choreography.
The dragon dodged the comet. Pan caught it with a portal circle and sent it back to the caster.
But, the choreographed spell sang on. It released a shield that caught the comet, protecting the troublesome Rhizo.
Pan huffed out a breath and shielded herself. She cast quick enough to catch the third movement, a shock of electrical energy. It ran in rivulets over Pan’s bubble. Pan’s shield almost died. She could strengthen it or cast something else.
Pan let it die. Her dragon swerved side to side and headed back for the Eidos. Another circle burst off. The Eidos and its rider teleported, but not far. It was not the best reaction to Pan’s charge but good enough. The dragon missed and bunched up as it tried to slow and turn.
Pan cast a quick telekinetic circle and pushed her opponent further, knocking the final attack spell off course. It whizzed by her dragon’s head and close to her shell of scales. Then, Pan cast a portal. She sighted far, and they passed through.
“If we stay and play with that Rhizo, we’ll never get any work done.” Ruthless. That’s what they had to be.
Rooks found it beautiful. She’d never seen a magical battle on this scale before. The lights and symbols charmed her, in ways that fighter skirmishes couldn’t. It was a dangerous viewpoint to hold.
A circle appeared ahead of Fauchard’s view. Rooks recognized it as Inez’s cast. Inez mumbled through her com to other mages. Those mages waited a deck below, spread before the viewing window. Rooks let Inez lead them. The Iruedian and Scaldin vessels had the advantage, despite the Volanter’s heavy casting, and she could let the mages roam a little free.
Inez’s circle left space for nested circles in its outer ring. Those circles glowed into view, and when all joined the ranks, the spell flared.
The shockwave bypassed the front of the Volanter line and hit the back of the ships.
“Very nice,” Rooks congratulated.
“I made my own little portal, and I had everyone stick a shockwave in.” Inez grinned.
“I saw.” Rooks began to frown.
The shockwave merely pushed the Volanter forward. Rooks couldn’t see any damage. The Volanter advanced further, and their riders sped ahead, disengaging with Iruedian fighters and Lurriens.
“They’re headed for Iruedim. Prepare to intercept them.” Rooks’ order rang through the ships. She watched as small ships along the back line both failed and succeeded.
“Some got through.” Inez gasped.
“Some did. They don’t like that we copied that spell. They probably don’t like that you did something so complex with it.” Rooks shook her head. She checked her screen and pulled up a view of Iruedim’s satellites. Two of the Volanter invaders got caught. The rest got through. “We need to work on our defense perimeter. Two out of ten is not good.”
Rooks had mages all over Iruedim. Thousands. They knew to be ready. There were eight Volanter invaders. Eight against thousands should be fine.