As the southern face of Giant’s Head finally became visible through the trees, it was as if a revitalizing breeze swept through the battered forces of 5th division. When first battalion’s sentries greeted them with smiles and cheers, ushering them into the lively camp at the foot of the mountain, the stress of the past week slowly lifted from their shoulders, and Edwin felt like he could finally breathe freely again.
Expecting their return, the camp had been set up as if they had been there, with spaces left intentionally empty for second, third and ninth’s cohorts. Reaching their assigned lot, the adventurers dropped their packs and enjoyed a well-deserved break from the continuous marching.
“I could sleep for a week,” Salissa said from where she’d lain down on the grass, hands shielding her eyes from the sun.
“We’ll have the rest of the day off, probably tomorrow as well,” Bordan said, sitting down and taking off his boots with a sigh. “Don’t think you’ll get a week though.”
“There you are!” a familiar voice called as a smiling Leodin pushed through the surrounding adventurers. “You took your sweet time!”
“If we’d known that it was inconveniencing you, we would’ve turned around earlier,” Bordan said sarcastically, tossing one of his boots at the marksman, which he dodged.
“How did it go?” the young man asked as he stopped next to Edwin. “Did you get them?”
“Not… really,” Bordan said, grimacing. The other two gladly let him get their final teammate up to speed, as none of them particularly wanted to relive their memories.
“Wait,” Leodin said, sounding alarmed. The news of their defeat had shocked him, but only near the end of the story did he jump in. “Who was it that got hit? Which cohort?”
“3-3 pretty much got wiped out, and 2-4 took a massive hit,” Bordan answered. “Even with 3’s few survivors rolled into 4, it’s barely at two thirds strength—”
“Survivors?” Leodin asked increasingly panicked. “Was Gedrin one of them?”
For a few seconds there was silence as the weight of the question settled on the other three.
Of course, Edwin thought numbly. Gedrin was in 3-3. With everything going on, I completely forgot about him.
“No,” Bordan said quietly. “I saw what was left of them. There were only ten or so, I would’ve noticed if Gedrin had been among them. Leodin, I’m so sorry.”
Edwin looked on as his friend sank to his knees, eyes unfocused. Salissa rushed over and enveloped him in a hug even as he began to shake uncontrollably. He stood by and watched helplessly as Leodin grabbed onto the petite mage with all his strength, sobbing like a man who had just lost his only brother.
--- ----- ---
Walter had never had the kind of friendships that would have exposed him to situations like this one, nor had he been any good with people in general, so people close to him expressing strong feelings left him stranded in uncharted territory. After a few minutes of awkwardly standing to the side while his friends did their best to comfort the distraught Leodin, Edwin did the only thing he could think of: He fled into the controlled chaos of the camp, disappearing among the soldiers.
He didn’t know how long he wandered, but at some point his feet carried him to a circle of familiar wagons.
“Edwin?” a voice called out to him, and Edwin stopped to meet the approaching mage.
“I heard what happened to you guys,” Archibald said, looking him up and down. “I’m glad you’re alright.”
“Thank you,” Edwin said, grimacing. “Many others were less fortunate.”
The Journeyman nodded, and for a few seconds neither of them knew how to continue.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Alright,” Edwin broke the silence, resuming his walk toward the wagons. “Why don’t you catch me up on what you have been up to?”
“Of course,” Archibald answered immediately, recognizing the attempt to change topics, “though it’s much less exciting. It took a while to get through the aftermath of the forest fire, and by the time we made it here you were long gone. Since then, we’ve just been sitting here, waiting for you to come back. The garrison was in a pretty bad state, so they were all too happy to have us – especially the healers. Speaking of, I heard it was your unit that captured the Marradi healers?”
“Oh, right,” Edwin said, perking up. “I’d completely forgotten about that. We really lucked out there.”
Archibald stepped up on the ladder to unlock the ritualist wagon’s door, then climbed in and beckoned Edwin to follow. Jumping up, Edwin took a deep breath of the stale air inside the wooden box, of paper and ink and the faint metallic note of magesilver that people had always told Walter he was imagining. If he closed his eyes, it almost smelt like home.
“When Master Gregory heard that there were captured mages, he went down to talk to them, and he got them to defect pretty much immediately. All he had to do was promise them that they didn’t have to fight anymore, that they could work in a hospital far from the front, and they were all too happy to agree.”
“Really?” Edwin said, opening his eyes and scratching his chin. “I guess it makes sense, it’s not like they wanted to be involved in all this. It probably helped that they’d been stuck in a windowless hole for a few days at that point. It’s good for us, because even if they don’t directly help us here, it should free up a few of our healers who had to stay behind.”
“Exactly, that’s what Master Gregory said as well,” Archibald nodded. “What else… Oh, the spellweavers finished their fireball! Apparently they didn’t manage to replicate it exactly, so they just made their own version of it. They’re already hard at work learning how to cast it.”
“Finally!” Edwin sighed. “Though I have to admit, I’m not sure how useful it will be. I mean, the Marradi have been using theirs almost since the beginning, and we found counters to it very quickly. Even without the ritual, we kind of managed with just shields.”
“You’re right,” Archibald said, sitting down at one of the small chairs and leaning back on two legs, his back against the wall. “In the stories, fireball was always described as such a powerful weapon, killing thousands upon thousands in the Mage Wars alone. Do you think it was just exaggerated?”
“Maybe,” Edwin said, frowning. “There are a number of other possible explanations as well, though. First of all, they obviously didn’t have rituals, so intercepting them at high altitude would’ve been much harder. Secondly, if I recall correctly, back then the ratio of mages to mundanes was quite different. If we had one mage per battalion instead of one per cohort, it would be a real challenge to cover everyone with shields at all times, and at the very least greatly hamper our movement. In the last few fights, we only made it work with how few mages we had because we didn’t give them a good target. If they’d turned their full firepower on us, they would’ve done a lot of damage despite the shields.”
“That could be it,” Archibald said, pushing off the wall to stand up and step over to a stack of blueprints. “Speaking of the ritual, we’ve done some refining on it. Here, have a look.”
Smiling, Edwin leaned over the table, studying the plan. “Looks good, but the shape of the stone baskets is weird. Is this meant to go into something else?”
“I wanted to change it so we don’t have to keep stealing people’s cooking pots. There’s nothing around it, though you can put it in a box for a more permanent setup.”
“So how do you plan on shaping this?” Edwin asked, tapping his finger on the drawing that showed a three-dimensional magesilver structure that looked almost like a net. “Making a mold for that looks like a massive pain and doing it by hand even worse.”
“Would you look at that, there is still something you don’t know!” Archibald said, laughing. “I think you’re going to like this. Follow me.”
He walked to the corner of the room, rapping his knuckles on the lid of a box. Edwin shot him a questioning look, then lifted it. Inside were a number of long, thin magesilver rods. It wasn’t the most common way to store the material, but it wasn’t anything special either.
“Take one,” Archibald said, grinning.
“You’re enjoying yourself way too much, you know?” Edwin admonished him as he lifted one of the rods out of the box. “I don’t see what’s so special…”
He trailed off, feeling the magesilver in his fingers. He gingerly applied some force, and the rod bent easily.
“I call it ‘magesilver wire’.” Archibald said with a triumphant grin. “Developing this was my main focus for the last few years. I want to do my master’s thesis on it once it’s finished, but that’s still a way off. So far, I’ve got three different types, all soft enough to be bent into shape with your hand, but with different resistances and flow rates.”
“This is genius!” Edwin exclaimed, carefully bending the silvery rod in his hands into a pretzel. “With this, working three-dimensionally is so much easier and faster than melting it completely and pouring it into a mold! And even for permanent construction, if you get one thin enough you could revolutionize the way the architects do mana cabling!”
“Yep, that’s the idea,” Archibald said with a proud smile. “I still need some more research work to get that far, but the prototypes show you that it works, so I’m confident that I can get there in two or three years – once I get the time to focus on it again, of course.”
Edwin wasn’t really listening anymore, as Walter was excitedly imagining a thousand ways to make use of the wire in his projects.