The Word was calm and composed, watching him with interest.
“Hmm, what is this?” the warrior asked in a reasonable tone. “A little man? Why are you here? How could you possibly expect to accomplish anything? Go home.”
Tenthé didn’t feel the need to answer.
“What? Too scared to talk? Let’s just call this off then. I mean, why not? The only thing you can do is face the inevitable. Hey! Nothing to say? Run away! I might spare you.”
At that point, he tossed a spell at Tenthé and added another to lash around and come at him from behind.
The first fizzled out, and the second passed through where Tenthé had been, flying back at the Word, where it burst against his shield, causing no real harm.
“Well, that was… AHHHH!” A sullen red spark drifted through the Word’s shield and seared his side as he flung himself out of its way. The spark continued on, going through the dome, and shortly afterward, muted yells could be heard from outside. The Word twisted and dodged as two small knives followed the spark. One missed, but the second hit his shield, where it stuck, floating in the air. Reaching through his shield, the Word grabbed the knife by its hilt, then screamed as the smell of burnt flesh accompanied a loud sizzle. Reflexively, he threw the knife to the floor, where it proceeded to melt itself into the sand.
Applying a quick heal, the Word then countered the attack with a huge fireball that exploded spectacularly, leaving red flames dancing about a white-hot outline of the boy’s shield, which lingered a second, then burst with a loud pop!
The Word’s grin faltered when a slightly smaller shape appeared in place of the first; some type of shield he’d never seen before. It rippled and shook as odd designs raced across its surface. Inside, he could make out a distorted view of the boy.
As he watched, the interior went fuzzy and sheets of bugs burst forth, racing toward him. Some flew, others ran on the ground and the dome walls, all of them smashing into his personal shield. The Word ignored the impacts until he noticed that when one of the creatures hit, a small chunk of his shield disappeared. It was being eaten away!
That shouldn’t be able to happen! Close to panicking, the Word fired off a massive number of small glass balls to kill the pests and ricochet around the dome, hopefully hitting the boy. The little missiles did take care of the vermin, but had no discernible effect on his opponent.
Stomping on the last few hardy beetles, the Word looked up to find the boy watching from inside his weird shield. He wasn’t worried; his Mentor had gifted him access to almost limitless power, but he was wasting time that should have spent supporting his warriors.
Wait! He had a bit of a revelation. The boy did not seem to be responding seriously, even after he’d been assaulted by some of the strongest spells the Word knew.
“Boy. Are you toying with me?” he growled.
Still no answer. At that point, the Word nearly lost his temper, which hadn’t happened in quite a while. Some sanity prevailed, and he paused.
“What’s your name?” he asked, not expecting a response.
“Tenthé.”
“Oh… ha-ha. Really? I highly doubt that. Where’s your puppet?”
Tenthé’s form indicated somewhere behind him, then settled back to his previous position. Watching.
Neither of them seemed inclined to start the festivities again, but delay wasn’t to the Word’s advantage.
“I’m sorry, boy. I don’t know how you got roped into this job, but I need to finish this.”
In an instant, he gathered up his power and a hazy sphere formed around the boy. As the Word forced in energy, the sphere inexorably shrank until everything inside was squeezed into a tiny ball. He kept up the pressure until there was no chance that anything survived. He released the spell and watched as the contents expanded.
Wait! Where was the blood? Whenever he’d used this spell before, there had always been lots of blood. The Word fired some glass balls at the remaining mass, which broke apart into mud and string. Was the boy a simulacrum? Was that what he’d been fighting?
He tried every trick he knew to see if there was anything, anything at all, that he could have missed.
Nothing.
With no enemy to fight, he gave up and walked to the wall of the dome. Placing his hand on it, he discovered that it was another kind of odd shield. Using a standard dispel had absolutely no effect. Just to be thorough, he probed underground and verified the shield went all around. A closed structure. The Word didn’t know how to make something like the spark the boy had used, but he tried every technique he had to get rid of the barrier, to no avail. He forced himself as far as he could up and down the plane gradients, but even there he was blocked.
Suddenly, he spun in a circle, firing off volleys of fire, force lances, rocks, acid-filled spheres; almost everything he had in his arsenal. The projectiles and spells bounced off the walls of enclosure, exploding everywhere, causing enough fury to buffet the Word through his personal shield. It resulted in no discernible damage to the dome, nor did it flush out the boy.
If he still existed.
Outside, he could see things weren’t progressing well. Sure, the warriors were expendable, but without his support, this mission was looking like a bust. He had to get out! Light and sound accompanied his efforts until he firmly established the futility of brute force. Resolving this was going to be a process, he sighed. After a few more failures, he attempted an obscure unraveling spell that managed to change the structure of the wall slightly. Progress! Of a sort.
Given everything he’d tried, his best guess was that the barrier was constructed from a weave of different spells. What one was weak against, another would handle. Once he figured that out, he began making headway as he addressed each layer separately.
After dispelling a seemingly endless number of sub-spells, the Word was dismayed to hear an odd crackling behind him. Fearing the worst, he turned and watched a boy-shaped figure forming out of the very air, using magic he had no concept of. After a moment it gelled and the Tenthé stood on the opposite side of the dome, silent as usual.
Resolving to end this, the Word dug deep for the most heinous spell he knew. It would rip reality apart, almost certainly annihilating the boy, but at the cost of his own life. Just as he was about to let fly, his opponent did the most useless thing; he dove to the ground!
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At that moment, the dome disappeared and an instant later, a beam of utter destruction ripped through the area, taking the Word to the next life, along with a fair number of warriors and House troops unlucky enough to be in the line of fire.
When the beam snapped off, Tenthé stood up, turned, and watched as a pair of Horde warriors broke the shield around the caster that had just fired. They rushed in, swinging at the little figure standing on the caster. Dodging a sword slash, Bear jumped right into the path of the cudgel. It smashed him far into the boulders piled at the base of the cavern wall.
As the warriors stared, Bear popped up, yelling. “Stuffed toy, you morons! Thanks for the assist!”
With that, he ducked behind a boulder and was gone.
Tenthé turned back to the conflict taking place around him. This wasn’t his first battle and probably not his last. Both sides seemed determined to grind it out; he felt no need to jump in. Without the Word to tell them any different, the warriors appeared to think that a kid wandering through their ranks was such a strange thing that none were inclined to attack while they waited their turn at the House troops. He remained unstealthed to see if it would provoke anyone, but nothing happened as he made his way out into the cavern.
Out in the boulders, it was peaceful. He stopped beside Nik and plopped to the ground. Nik seemed to be in a funk and didn’t even look at him.
“Hey, Tenthé. Nice plan. It seems to have worked out.” Nik eventually forced out.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, my leg.”
Tenthé put his hand over the injury and dumped some cure into him. As the healing took root, a more relaxed Nik gazed out at the combat.
“Do you think they’re going to quit?” he asked. “Both sides are whittling each other down to nothing.”
“Well, no. The Horde has no leader and the House troops have stopped listening. Happens to a lot of soldiers the first time in battle.”
“Um, any idea where George is?”
“Yeah. He’s over in that direction. Seems okay, and he’s being smart; keeping out of the way.”
“I… I never got a chance to do anything. Didn’t fire off a bolt or anything.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Look at all of them. They’re casting spells, hacking into each other, fighting. But, you know what? All their effort isn’t going to change anything one little bit.
“And, this could be a great deal worse. The only ones dying today are those who signed up for it. Most of the other ways this could have gone would have ended up with a lot of regular folk dead.”
Tenthé faced Nik, moving up to get in his face. “You didn’t fire a shot, and look, we have a good enough result. Maybe if you had, something worse would have happened. Sometimes the shot you don’t take is more important than the one you do.”
Nik stared at Tenthé. “You know… that’s not anything a kid would say.”
“Oh, I am a kid. But I’ve been through a lot. It leaves a mark.”
Continuing to observe the fight, Nik commented, “Yeah. I see what you mean. Uh… maybe we should check if George’s okay.”
“Yeah. Alright.”
Nik followed Tenthé. After a short walk, they came upon a figure sitting on a boulder, cradling a large caster in his lap.
“Hey, George.”
“Hey, Nik.”
“What you got there?”
“Really big caster. You know…” he paused, then cried, “Gods damn it! I caused all this!”
“Nah. Don’t think so. Whoever fired the star did it.” Nik replied.
It took a moment, but George eventually admitted, “Maybe. I suppose.”
Conversation lagged. Everybody continued watching as the two sides chewed away at each other.
After a while, Nik asked, “Any idea when this is going to end? It’s getting pretty sad.”
Tenthé answered, sounding somewhat weary, “Unless a bigger power steps in, they’ll fight until only a few remain. Songs will be made of this, heroes, and so on.”
As if his words were a prophecy, high up in the cavern, a hidden door opened and a bright light from a passage shone across the wall behind the combatants. A second later, someone stepped into the light, casting a huge shadow which shrank as the newcomer walked closer.
After a few steps, a figure came into view and halted, taking in the battle below. Something was strange: occasionally it would become fizzy, then solidify.
Clear as day, a voice boomed out, “Well, drat! You started without me! Naughty, naughty! Time to put your toys away and get on with what comes after.”
Very few of the combatants were listening, but a bellowed curse echoed from someone on the House side, followed by a spell arching up at the mysterious figure.
When it hit, a spray of orange cubes blasted out, then reversed course and smashed together, reforming into the original figure. Immediately, a whip traced the spell back, its end moving faster than the eye could track. The House spell caster, plus everybody around him, both soldiers and Horde, dissolved into a chunky orange cloud that roiled and heaved.
The nearest untouched combatants yelled and jumped away. Slowly, the fighting stopped, rippling out from where the stranger had cast the odd spell.
The voice stated, “The next time I won’t be so discriminating. I can easily handle a group this small, and believe me when I say that you have no defense. My advice is to exercise extreme caution, but it’s up to you. It makes no difference to me if you put down your weapons or not, but it’s time to quit fighting.”
Surprisingly enough, in a world of magic, this sort of thing wasn’t unheard of. Typically, it meant bigger powers were involved. The standard response was to stand by and see what happened; anything was possible. The stranger might actually be capable of doing what they claimed.
Whoever it was, descended to the floor, using a ramp that had been hidden until now and continued on, past various wary groups, until arriving at the remains of the stage where the House leaders were standing.
“Hey Mom.”
“I-I-Isabell?”
“Yeah. More or less. I didn’t much appreciate your accommodations, so I found a way out.”
“ABOMINATION!” Isabell’s mom yelled as she struck with her power: Shear. It cut anything.
When the force hit, Isabell split into two groups of orange cubes for a second or two, then came back together, forming into herself again.
Her response was immediate. A strand of hair whipped out, transforming her mom’s arm into orange cubes.
“I wouldn’t put too much stress on that if I were you,” Isabell warned. “It’ll come apart and it’s really a chore to reassemble,”
Her mom wasn’t listening, she screamed and flung her arm around, which, as expected, came apart. The cubes fell to the ground and started bouncing.
It was kind of fascinating. They just kept going… bounce, bounce, bounce.
“Well. That’s unfortunate. You may want to collect these. If not, I guess you’ll need to regrow your arm.”
Another strand of her hair shot out over the Horde and hit a warrior trying to escape down one of the tunnels. The strand snapped back, leaving nothing behind except more bouncing cubes.
Isabell pushed through the crowd of House leaders, forcing them to part. Not stopping, she continued on into the cavern, aimed directly at George, Nik, and Tenthé.
Who watched as she strode up.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself,” replied Nik.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Good. You?”
“Same.”
She glanced at George, who was sitting on the boulder staring at nothing as he cradled the caster.
“What’s his deal?”
“He thinks he’s responsible.”
“Is he?”
Nik wiggled his hand in the universal sign for maybe, maybe not, then pointedly looked at Tenthé. Isabell nodded her understanding.
At that moment she fuzzed, turning into cubes, then back.
Nik ventured, “Uh, that’s new. Care to share?”
“Oh, nothing much. Mama locked me up, and I might have made a deal with some god to get out. Wasn’t what I expected. More like it just happened. The cubes and me are still working things out. As best I can tell, I’m part Isabell, part armor, and part cube.”
Nik flinched. She was speaking as if presenting a particularly dry lecture; any normal person would be a screaming wreck.
“The cube thing is big,” she continued. “Huge, really, but it doesn’t have any idea about our plane, so I’m sort of in charge. For the moment. I guess.”
At that point, she turned to gaze up at the roof of the cavern. Nik noticed Tenthé looking in the same direction.
“Looks like the party’s about to get bigger,” she stated dryly.