-÷-
Aphame grinned ferally as the shriek of some great mechanism met her keen ears. It looked like her sisters had accomplished their task after all.
She had begged to be part of the strike force to attack the factory. Intelligence suggested there would be gargoyles defending the structure, and she had wanted nothing more than to test herself in aerial combat against the famed Bracadan constructs.
Alas, her incredible strength and endurance saw her added to an ad-hoc sticho with a special purpose. For thousands of wingbeats she had been cursing her weaker sisters for being too frail to bear the terrible weight she and her team currently held aloft.
She would set neither claw nor feather inside the massive golem factory. She would cross overtop of it for one brief, keystone moment upon which the success of the entire raid would be balanced.
Now that the factory's grand skylight was open, that moment was fast approaching. She angled herself to begin her laborious descent.
-÷-
Their passage through the streets had been swift. Several times Gannulus had stopped to marshall the scattered Bracadan fighters remaining in an area, banding the survivors together on defensible ground and taking a handful with him to assist at the factory. The few mages he found were posted with groups of gremlins and ordered to remain outdoors until the skies were clear.
His own forces, the gremlins and golems of his workshop, marched in tight formation flanking Haart's footmen.
The disciplined, martial Erathians were like a Seal of Authority from King Gavin himself. Gannulus suffered little resistance as he ordered mages who felt nothing but professional disdain for him about like they were collegiate cadets again.
For his part, Haart kept to himself as Gannulus barked commands. If a wry smile tickled the corners of his mouth as the mage berated particularly egregious laggards and cowards, it was nearly imperceptible, even to magesight.
Strangely, resistance continued to abate as they approached their destination.
The gremlins seemed not to notice, and the golems were characteristically impassive. Haart's footmen, on the other hand, were quick to take note. One voice in particular rose above a conspiratorial whisper.
"It's more Nighon trickery, I say. Something big is about to go down."
Haart glared over his shoulder at the source of the voice. Chastened, the man looked at his feet as he marched.
"Silence, men. A single piquet in a fortuitous post could blow our element of surprise. I assure you that our man Gannulus would never seek to march us into a trap."
I am already one of theirs, it seems. A marvel how quickly the crucible of combat bonds us together.
The mage glanced about warily, but even his enhanced senses revealed no hostile presence.
He directed his voice backwards, keeping it magically muffled so as not to carry far.
"I think you are right, some new phase of their plan begins to unfurl. If we are to disrupt their aims, we must get to the factory to assess where and how the damage will be wrought. It is just ahead. Be wary."
One of Haart's pikes cleared his voice.
"I'm just a farmer's son, so f'rgive my ignorance, but don't you whizzers 'ave a fair bit stored up inside wot could blow the factory up 'f it was mixed up just right?"
Haart looked at the footman incredulously, but Gannulus waved away the nobleman's concerns.
"A valid concern, but perhaps overblown. It would take having a fair bit more alchemical prowess than any harpy I have ever heard of having to create such an explosive in a short period of time, and it would be suicide for any involved without some method of creating a fuze."
"Don't you lot 'ave anyone inside who'd know 'ow?"
Gannulus' blood froze in his veins.
Ammie.
He thought back to a warm memory, several months ago on a gentle grass training field.
He was chiding her gently as she lounged on the soft ground, and she was deflecting his words with characteristically charming self-deprecation.
No Gan, her voice windchime-pretty even in exertion, I'm not worried about some errant magical arrow blasting us all to the hells and back. I'm perfectly capable of knocking a tray of electrolysed soda lye into a vat of aqua pura without the assistance of magic.
At the time it had been a lovely way to relieve the tension of a frustratingly difficult tutoring session, but in hindsight it was an alarming summation of her vulnerability. The harpies would have no qualms about forcing her to make and detonate their bomb.
For all the wonderful things he knew about her, Gannulus also knew she was not the sort of person to stand up to a determined Nighon inquisitor's ministrations for long. He didn't know anybody who was.
He fought to keep the fear from his voice as he replied to the soldier.
"We do. A staff of alchemists are always on shift at the factory, even when the laboratory floor is not in use. They would be expected to participate in the defense of the factory, but as you have seen that doesn't mean they chose to.
If they have been taken captive, with time they could be coerced into acting against their peers and Bracada."
The farmer's son nodded grimly. The implication was clear. Haart clapped a reassuring hand on the mage's upper arm.
"Not if we have anything to say about it, man. Take a team of pikes and archers with you to secure the inside, I'll wait outside with the balance of our forces to pick off any who -"
The charismatic noble was cut off by a ground-shaking noise coming from the factory. Gannulus stilled the outburst of chatter from the Erathians with a raised hand that took all of his focus to keep from trembling.
"That is the grand skylight, it covers the factory floor. Surely that means they've taken the interior, and they're opening it up to reinforcements. Come with me. Now."
He indicated Haart and a group of the man's scouts with his head, and they hurried to follow him. They rounded a corner and the cobblestone street opened up into a spacious square dominated by the towering silhouette of the golem factory.
Gannulus' eyes blazed with arcane energy as he scanned the scene with his magesight.
Haart saw the man's features twist with a cascade of warring emotions, from disappointment and rage to plain concern and outright fear.
The mage craned his head back to look up into the skies over the factory. His shoulders slumped, and as he fell to his knees the mage uttered a single, pained word.
"No."
Haart stepped forward to place a hand on the man's shoulder.
"Tell us what you see, by the Light!"
Gannulus shrugged him off furiously.
"Get inside!"
"What are you on about, mage?"
"Leave me here and get inside! Take your men and my gremlins and get indoors, now."
Haart heard the deadly seriousness of the man's tone. He saw the harpies spewing forth from the top of the factory. He turned to his men, shrugged. He muttered under his breath.
"I suppose discretion is the better part of valour."
He made haste back down the empty street to link up with the body of their force.
Gannulus entered the aethercasting trance. He knew the danger he faced casting so far and wide, but he had no other choice.
He had to warn them.
-÷-
Neela hovered at the shoulder of one of her blue-robed gremlins, directing the aim of his unit at the harpies churning the skies overhead.
An experienced Bracadan commander, it cost her very little to cast away from her body and assume control of a golem as it dealt with a descending harpy sticho. Their death cries had not finished ringing in her ears before her consciousness was free of the golem and drifting back to her azure form.
On the way there her astral self was accosted by a frantic presence.
"Neela, it is Gannulus. There is little time to explain, but the harpies are going to destroy the factory. Get your forces indoors and hunker down, the explosion will be large enough to - I have to go! Keep your head down!"
As suddenly as it had appeared the presence was gone, whorling emotional undercurrents still stirring the aether it had touched.
-÷-
Aphame reveled in the rush of cool air over her face and through her feathers. Though she still constantly fought to guide the mine's damnable weight, their descent meant she no longer had to spend the energy to keep it aloft.
She didn't need to mark the progress of her sisters, she could feel their every movement as the great hunk of metal between them bucked and twisted in the currents of air. They all did their part, but as the lead of her sticho it was her duty to steer the hated contraption to its point of release.
Her keen eyes spotted their sisters fleeing through the open skylight even at this great height. She didn't bother to count their numbers, her orders were clear. Release at 2500 pechus above the factory and make for the rendezvous immediately. No waiting for laggards, no delaying the drop for anyone. Under no circumstances were any of her special sticho to risk capture, even to assist stricken sisters.
She eyed the spout of the weather glass around her neck. A second, equally precious gift from their turncoat ally, the glass had been specifically sealed at the same height above ground that her sticho was to drop the mine. A thin column of dyed fluid drooped ever closer to the markline that told her to release her deadly payload.
She filled her lungs and squawked a command to her sisters. She felt the mine lurch in her claws as 3 other sets of talons finally relinquished the burden they had been carrying for so long.
She gracefully arched her body to coast away from the path of the mine as wind resistance caused the sleek device to fall faster than her feathered form. She flipped about the handle like a gymnast, and suddenly the mine was below her.
She did not bother to fight the mine's weight, simply using the drag she provided as a rudder to ensure it did not drift off-course. The column on the weatherglass sank ever more quickly in its spout.
Then the fluid was past the markline. Her talons were so cramped she was nearly unable to release her grasp, but with a determined shriek she prised her claws from the frigid handle one by one.
She was filled with a jarring sense of lightness after the marathon feat of her long, arduous flight. She looked down between her talons and noted with satisfaction that the mine was not tumbling, as Lady Lorelei had feared during their preparation for the strike. Their dozens of practice runs with dummy mines had paid off.
Her part in the extensively-planned operation played out, she looked ahead and snarled with determination.
She still had a lot of flying to do before she met her sisters at the rendezvous.
-÷-
Far below, a badly wounded alchemist lay ensconced in her corner of the rooftop by one of the massive glass plates of the grand skylight.
She had been minding her own business, attempting not to freeze to death on the exposed factory roof, when the skylight had peeled back like the petals of some great crystal flower come to bloom. She was trapped in place, but the faint warmth and insulation provided by the glass panel were a welcome improvement over her prior circumstances.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
She grimaced in pain as vitriol chewed the skin beneath her robes, and furtively attempted to enter the combat trance once again. Alas, its pain-dulling hold eluded her stricken mind.
She heard Gan's voice, faraway and dreamlike, and assumed she must be entering a delirium.
Not now, Ameliese. You've got to stay focused. If you lose your head now you could die up here, it might be hours after they retake the factory before someone thinks to sweep the roof.
"Ammie!"
The voice seemed a little clearer now, and the battered mage shook her head.
"Gan, are you... here?"
Her voice croaked out through dry lips, sounding worn and delicate.
"I am, and I am not. I am casting Ammie. You need to leave the factory, now! There is not time to explain, y-"
"I can't, Gan. I'm trapped on the roof. I crawled up here to get away from the harpies. What's going on?"
Gannulus' was quiet for long enough that she began to think it was delirium after all. His voice was harrowingly sombre when he spoke again.
"The harpies have stolen a land-mine, Ameliese. I saw them carrying it myself. They... They will drop it in the grand skylight. It will happen any moment now. I... am sorry, Ammie. That was very clever, my love. You could not have known about the mine."
The alchemist closed her eyes for a deep breath. She felt a faint trickle of magic returning to her frozen limbs, and began to enter the casting trance.
Her astral form looked down at herself. A pathetic bundle of robes, stained with blood and burned by acid, her ruined hand clutched to her like an infant. Tears had frozen on her cheeks.
"I think..."
She huffed.
"I think it's good to be free of the fear."
"What do you mean?"
"The whole time, from the moment the sigil appeared in the lab, I've been terrified. At first in that blind, desperate, crawling way that consumes your every thought and bends you to its will. Then I was terrified because I knew I had to act, and act in ways I was a stranger to, if I was to have any chance of surviving. I had to... kill... two of them. I was petrified of making the wrong choice and ending up one of their... playthings."
She shuddered.
"I'm not afraid any more. There are no right choices to make, no consequences for choosing wrong. I'm not happy to die, but I can accept it. I can relax."
"It pains me that I could not be there to protect you."
"Oh stop Gan, you're a militia captain. If you'd been born in Erathia you'd be a captain in their armies. You protect people because you can't help yourself, and you were already doing as much good as you possibly could have."
He took a moment to reply.
"Well, I can stay with you now. I will not let you perish alone."
She turned, eyes alight with concerned frustration.
"Damn you Gannulus, you noble fool! You know how dangerous it is to commune with another caster's astral form. You'll be scattered to the winds when my soul releases!"
"I will be regardless, my love. I warned the rest of the militia of the bomb's approach, and it cost me dearly. I wanted to check on you with the last of my magic."
She looked at him then. Saw the fraying edges, the currents and eddies that danced and spun about him as his spirit unraveled.
"Well, that's both of us then, huh?"
He nodded, smiling weakly.
She laughed, a hollow sound, and gestured at her crumpled form.
"Gods, what a wreck I am."
She felt Gan's astral presence draw near.
"You are breathtaking, Ameliese. You wear your wounds gracefully. I would hate to see your opponents."
She sneered bitterly.
"Hateful creatures. I'd not waste my last moments with you speaking of them."
This time his smile contained genuine warmth.
"Aye. I do not regret much, facing what lies ahead. I would have liked more time with you."
She shrugged. Fighting every instinct that was hammered into her by countless college instructors, she reached out to take his astral hand.
Tendrils of loving kindness sprang from their grasping limbs, entwined, spun together and drifted away on the repellent currents generated by their ethereal interaction.
A strange sort of contented cold seemed to drift over the affected areas as their swirling forms lost coherence.
"That's not as bad as I thought it might be.
I'd have liked that too, Gan. All that time drilling, and training, it would have been nice to steal a few more hours together. It's not as though the rest of the militia was putting in the work."
Gannulus snorted as he allowed more of himself to drift into Ameliese's faint, flickering form.
"That is a horrible sort of vindication, Ammie dear."
She grinned playfully.
"I know, my love, but it's all you'll get. I knew my big, strong militia captain was right, and I wish now I'd fought a little harder to get your voice heard."
They had drifted nearly into one another, and the distinction between the two was quickly becoming hazy as their faint remaining energies continued to intermingle. She looked up into his eyes.
"Always so intense, that gaze. I am glad it softens for me now. It was hard to maintain eye contact when I met you. I think even then I sensed that you saw me.
Thank you for trying to save me tonight, Gannulus. I know not what the next world holds for us, but I hope you'll remem-"
In a kaleidoscopic burst of astral energy, their final conversation came to an abrupt close.
-÷-
Castles across Enroth are guarded by all manner of moats, from the flowing lava of Eofol's infernal keeps to the impassable mires and stinging vermin of Tatalian fortress-pyramids.
It is a rare siege-master indeed who wouldn't prefer any of those to a grassy field concealing a scatter of land-mines.
The force of their blast is enough to fell ogres and demons like wheat before the scythe, and the raging alchemical fire they spew into the air spreads death and destruction to all it can touch. Their metal casing peels outwards into a storm of vicious red-hot slivers to carve its way through the survivors.
In the fuel-rich confines of the golem factory the mine's effect is particularly devastating.
Aphame's aim is nearly perfect, and the device caromes off the edge of a skylight panel frame into the space below. The glass pane crazes with jagged cracks, but holds in place.
The mine plows into a gantry running the length of the chamber, and detonates nearly in the centre of the room.
The blast wave shatters crystal vats of voracious acids, and the ruined harpy on the laboratory floor is finally granted agonising peace by a sloshing wave of caustic soup.
Aqua fortis from a breached acid vat drains into readied cauldrons of mercury whose gremlins will never return to use them. The concoction quickly becomes cloudy as the mercury begins to fulminate.
The shrapnel blizzard spreads through the cavernous lab space with dizzying speed, the cloud of deadly shards growing ever more dense as fragments of shattered glass containers and sundered metal tools are caught up and carried along.
A sizzling strip of glowing steel punctures a cask of fuel oil, and its contents leak onto an overturned tray of ammonium nitre. A glob of frothing alchemical fire touches the mixture and triggers a large secondary explosion.
This new blast tips and ignites the cauldrons of fulminated mercury, adding more energy and shrapnel to the raging hellscape of competing chemical and kinetic forces.
A hundred different reactions occurring at once, being stirred and admixed by entropy incarnate, coalesce into one great column of acrid roaring flames that soars skyward. Metal ducts and gantries shriek as they are torn loose and shredded into tangled ruins and coughed out of the grand skylight.
Viewed from the outside, the factory shakes on its foundation. It appears to gather itself and then belch a spectacular plume of smoke and burning debris.
Panes of the grand skylight are rendered into clouds of fragmenting glass and cast into the air.
The battered alchemist trapped underneath, blessedly unaware of her own body's sensations, is killed instantly when her crumpled form is pierced by a hail of shrapnel. Her remains are atomised by the heat and wind, and borne aloft like the evaporations of some hellish lake.
Metal hunks and gobbets of volatile alchemical soup rain upon the streets of Skyreach, and the devastation spreads quickly as blazes spring up across the quiet mountain town. People are struck down by the raining projectiles and maimed by the burning chemicals, and panic seizes the population.
It is long past sunrise by the time a remote semblance of order is restored.
-÷-
He drifted through a dark, formless void.
He couldn't remember who he was. Attempts to plumb his memories turned up little more than harried fragments of great violence and fear.
He thought he might have been a soldier, but the idea didn't seem to sit quite right.
He was unable to see himself, attempting to turn his eyes downward resulting only in the suggestion of some ethereal mist and the sensation of chasing one's own tail.
Suddenly his perception was seized by something seemingly far off. A growing light in the distance.
Though he had no limbs with which to move, he willed himself in the light's direction. Whether he succeeded, or the light simply came to him, he knew not.
Suddenly he saw. He remembered. His soul filled with agony as he cried out against the inexorable approach of the light.
He fought futilely, and once more his consciousness was subsumed in some higher process.
-÷-
Gannulus gasped as his awareness filled his physical body again. His whole body ached as though beaten, but nothing felt broken.
With a start he opened his eyes and stared into the concerned face of Greem the gremlin.
"Sir! Thought you died."
"As did I, Greem. What... happened? I remember casting... There was a bomb! The golem factory, is it...?"
He hesitated for a moment, unsure that he wanted the answer. The gremlin took it as a prompt to speak.
"Destroyed sir, razed. Will take many months to rebuild."
His conversation with Ameliese and its sudden end came rushing back to him, and he nearly choked on the bitter sob that welled up in his throat. The gremlin stepped back in alarm.
"Sir?"
"I... am going to need a moment, Greem."
"Yes sir."
Tears spattered the cobblestone as the wizard reeled from the shock of his mind knitting itself back together in a world that was undeniably and forever worse than the one it had left.
After a long time, the wizard raised his torso from his prostrate position and craned his neck to look through blurred eyes into the mockingly tranquil sky. A desolate howl tore from his throat.
"It was supposed to be both of us!"
Exhausted, he lowered himself to the stone of the street. He nearly collapsed, and Greem gently propped him up.
The gremlin gestured to a companion.
"Go find Haart. Tell Haart Gan is awake."
The red-robed figure nodded once before darting off around the corner.
-÷-
Haart made his way through the chaos and debris of the cobblestone streets. The little gremlin was just ahead, moving as quickly as it could to lead him to its master.
When they finally came across him, the sight was grim.
He was propped up with his back against a stone wall, his legs straight out like a wounded infantryman. His eyes were haggard and bloodshot, and he was staring sightlessly at the building across from him.
Though he had not a scratch on him, his visible skin was darkened by a uniform bruise from the blast wave emitted by the factory explosion. Haart mused that it was probably the open skylight that saved him, directing much of the force upwards into the sky.
Haart cleared his throat, and it took a moment for the man's gaze to settle on him. The mage's eyebrows rose in recognition.
"You. It is gone, Haart. She... is gone. They blew it up."
The big Erathian's characteristic charm was disctinctly muted for once.
"They did. I'm sorry, Gannulus. She isn't the only one. The explosion rained much devastation on Skyreach."
"I thought we were doing so well, Haart. Many gremlins perished, but the harpies bought those lives with their blood."
"My friend, sharper minds than ours could not have predicted them dropping a damned land-mine through the factory's roof. We were doing well, and thanks to your warning a lot of lives were saved."
Gannulus lapsed into bleary-eyed confusion for a moment, before returning to lucidity.
"The land-mine! I know not how they got their filthy claws on it, but their whole plot revolved around it. This was planned well in advance."
"Do you know of anyone with grudge enough against the College to turn traitor?"
"I know of more than one small mind with big dreams, whose egos could not handle the realization that they were far from the finest of their peers. I would not have guessed that any of them could damn an entire town in the depths of their spite."
"It does not take a cruel man to inflict terrible misery. Only one who is desperate enough to allow their hand to be guided."
"Wise words, Erathian. The college will investigate, at any rate.
I hope someday the perpetrators of this atrocity will meet their just fate. I know I would like to dispense it."
The mage looked down at himself.
"Perhaps more violence is not the answer. I... I am unsure what to do next. I will certainly be sacked from my post as militia captain. If I am terribly unlucky I will be arrested. I am not the only captain in Skyreach, but certainly the least popular."
"Hells with that, man! You're one of the finest Bracadan fighters I've ever seen. You're a natural leader, and a clever tactician."
"Aye, but a poor academic, and a worse politician. The college has never known what to do with me, and under the circumstances they shall see more use of me as a scapegoat than as a part-time combat instructor."
"Damn them, then. Travel with me! I could use another man of magic. Nobody knows you're alive. From the way you spoke to me before the bomb fell I get the sense that you didn't think you'd survive either. It's a clean break."
The mage struggled internally. When he replied, his words were halting.
"I... they will need me. To rebuild. To marshall those who were..." his voice wavered briefly, "... not lost. I can do some good here while Skyreach recovers, until the investigation is over."
Haart sucked on his teeth as he looked furtively at the surrounding devastation, thinking hard. His gaze returned to Gannulus.
"Kreegan armies sally forth from the ashes of Eofol. Krewlod and Tatalia skirmish along their entire border in their eagerness to pick the bones of Erathia's fallen settlements. Even the necromancers of barren Deyja are particularly dour and insular of late.
War is coming to Antagrich, Gannulus. The light is going to need leaders, and warriors.
You cannot save the world from burning sequestered here in the mountains. Not in a town whose only strategic asset has already been razed.
There are a hundred journeyman mages in Bracada who could direct the repairs here with their eyes closed.
Come with me, man. Not on bent knee, bowed of head like some sniveling Nighon underlord. Travel with me as equals, and together we shall fight the evil that grows in the far flung corners of Enroth."
The mage looked at him, weighing his words and reading his eyes. He glanced at the men flanking their lord. Saw their loyalty, their steely resolve. His expression faltered.
"I... I cannot leave my country to this fate. For all our contraptions and war-machines we are a nation of lofty academics. Many will perish when our ivory towers are toppled."
"Then take the fight to them. Nighon tunnels secreted the Kreegan hordes across the Erathian border, and their advisers accompany the invasion forces even now. I know not their aim, but their stinking handprints are all over this coming storm. Help me stop them from accomplishing their dark goals."
Gannulus looked inwards, weighed his warring emotions against the razor logic of a finely-tuned Bracadan mind. He wanted nothing more than to punish himself with a lifetime of squalid ignominy for allowing his love to be slain, but knew that nothing could be more disrespectful to her memory.
He pursed his lips, steeled himself, and turned his face up towards the handsome knight.
"I accept, Haart. We shall travel this land together, and prevent as much tragedy as we can."
A broad grin split the man's face, and he held out a hand for his new companion.
The mage looked hesitant.
"I... do not think that's a good idea. I cannot move without experiencing some pain or another."
The knight frowned.
"Well I hate to leave you here, shall I have Cadric fetch a healer?"
Gannulus shook his head, winced.
"The college will know I yet live then."
"If you're determined to wait, my cleric makes his way here with all haste. Cuthbert will have you back to fighting shape in an instant."
"That will do just fine."
"In the meanwhile I'll have my men fashion a litter for you so we can get you indoors. I'd hate for one of your superiors from the college to come across you like this."
"I am in no shape to protest. Are my gremlins and golems with your men?"
"The gremlins, yes. Your iron golem as well. The stone golem was commandeered by another wizard to assist in the disaster relief."
"That is just as well, the stone golem never belonged to me. I would have taken it, given the chance, but it will do much good around here. It will be a long time before they can make more."
Haart's face darkened momentarily.
"Aye, Erathia will not be pleased to learn as much. A blow to our allies is a blow to us in times of unrest. I pray the restoration goes smoothly. Wait here, my men will be along shortly."
With a practiced flourish, the sturdy man turned on one heel and made his way down the ruined street.
-÷-
The next morning, a procession of Erathian and Bracadan troops made their way to the outskirts of town. They drew attention as they went, but were not stopped. Anyone who might seek to ask questions of them was wholly absorbed in the recovery effort.
At the head of the column, a knight rode proudly, head held high. Flanking him were two robed figures. One in plain brown, the other rich crimson.
The red-robed figure wore leaden features beneath his thick scarf as the buildings of Skyreach receded into the distance. He had ventured outside the bounds of the town more than once in the course of his studies, but never traveled farther than the Bracadan border. He was gripped by a sense of melancholy as he looked on his home for what might be the last time.
With a renewed look of determination the figure turned Northwards, towards Erathia and the rest of Antagrich. Somewhere out there was the vile mind that conceived of the raid that took his Ameliese.
He was going to find them.