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The cool wind tosses Leela’s hair as the mighty beast gallops beneath her.
The air is polluted with the stench of smoke and rumbles with a never ending peal of exploding bombs. The ground shakes with each new bombardment but her sure footed steed never slows and never wavers.
It’s strength becomes her strength, if an animal can charge through hell and madness with an iron resolve then so can she.
The warm glow of the burning city fades as she rides into the dark expanse of trees. Bradberry Park is a large, overgrown patch of woods near to the center of town. A breeding ground for criminal activity, it’s days as a pleasure spot for the low nobility are long past. Avoided at night as a place of danger, tonight it is perhaps the safest place in town. Nobody would waste a bomb on a worthless black patch of nothing, which is why it is the perfect centerpiece for the spell of the raijin.
As she rides deeper into the park the raging of the bombardments fades to a more distant rumble. She hears herself sigh, not realizing until this moment how truly terrified she is of being wiped out in an explosion. The dead faces of her brother and of her cousin bubble to the surface of her mind. They were as helpless as ants against the screaming death that continues to fall from those balloons.
But even ants can sting.
Leela’s eyes lock on Caddigan hill, a looming black mass which seems so close and still so far. As she rides on, the sky to the east erupts in a brilliant red as one of the thrice damned balloons meets a fiery end.
“Score one for us!” She shouts, kicking her horse into a sprint.
By her best guess that was the work of the high mages. The city had few but they were true masters and no doubt proudly displaying the wonders of their craft to a terrified enemy and a pride in her own low craft drives her on.
“You wait here, old boy.” She tells the stallion, stroking his thick black mane. “You deserve a nice long rest.”
She’d much prefer to bring the beast with her but the moonlit hill is far too steep for a horse and even if not, what she was preparing to bring into the world might frighten even the steeliest of stallions. So, she leaves him and makes for the stone staircase.
The steps are cracking, crooked, off kilter. Weeds and vines sprout from the crumbling stone and she looks up as she climbs to see the moon shining bright red through all of the smoke and hell in the sky like a beacon calling sailors home to port. She herself feels lost in a fog of anger and grief but she sets her sights on that beacon and rises with each step she takes.
Soon the rustling of leaves in the wind becomes more distinct to her than the distant sounds of battle and the moon above her becomes a more real thing than the flashes of combat in the eastern sky. She clutches her dead master’s staff tight in her hands, the key to the incomplete spell and the weapon with which she will unleash a terrible vengeance.
When she nears the plateau the thick trees begin to fall away until she finds herself standing in a grassy clearing atop the hill. From here she has a clear view of the city, usually it would be a calm vision flickering with the lights of torches and streetlamps. Tonight it is aglow with the fires of hell. Such a vision of the sheer devastation of her home brings a dampness to her eyes that she’s been holding in all night. If she isn’t careful the feelings will overwhelm her, grip her like clawed talons and pull her down.
“Be strong, Leela.” She tells herself, turning to survey the clearing for what she needs. She finds it, the central stone that took her and her master a week to procure and more than a day and a half to haul up here and place just right. Around the massive four foot hunk of magicyte are dozens of other pieces, some as big as a man’s head and others as small as a pebble. Each of them glows just a little, not enough to draw the enemy’s attention but just enough to let her see each one with clarity. She checks them all to make certain that none have been moved and that the circle they form creates the exact right pattern.
All is as it should be.
She raises her rod high in the air, the crystals on either end spark to life. She rotates it in her hands at first slowly but then the speed increases until she’s twirling it around like a batton and her dance begins. Her feet move wildly, faster and faster, twirling and stomping as she sends herself into a frenzy.
“Winds of the east, winds of the west, winds of the north and winds of the south!” She shouts as she brings the rod crashing down to touch a crystal in each direction. With each touch there is a flash, a bright spark of magic but she never slows and never wavers.
As she tosses the staff into the air she dances between the smaller stones, creating a show of lights as she touches each of them with the magic circles carved onto the souls of each of her boots.
“Earth and Sky!” She shouts, twirling on a single boot as she catches the falling staff in her hand and spins it over her head.
“I call upon the spirit of lightning,” she shouts. “I call you and I name you Raijin.”
She brings the staff down upon the central stone and wind is still and the circle grows dark.
“The enemy is on the wind and I call you to strike him down.”
Leela feels a prickling on her skin as her hairs begin to stand on end. Yellow sparks bounce between her staff and the central hunk of magicyte. First only a few but their number increases until she begins to feel as if she’s holding back a flood of fire.
“Raijin, I command that you burn them from the sky and show no mercy!”
Sparks no more, what she holds between her staff and the stone are bolts of lightning, growing in intensity. She feels a kind of humming inside of her, feels it deep in her bones as she feels the hot staff burn the flesh of her hands. She holds on, knowing that if she makes a mistake the Raijin will be far more devastating an enemy than any army.
“I bind you here Raijin, until the mission is complete, until your every essence is spent.”
She drives the staff into the ground and quickly runs from the circle as sparks rise up out of every bit of magicyte and converge.
They begin to take a form, ten feet or perhaps fifteen and blindingly bright. The Raijin is like a man-shaped mass of sparks and lightning, ever shifting and flowing. The grass beneath it burns up as it raises an appendage to the air. Leela’s heart pounds in her chest as she stares in awe and terror at the horrible thing she has unleashed.
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She checks her thoughts, unleashed but not unbound. A weapon aimed like an arrow at the enemy’s heart and she herself the archer. No sooner has she thought this than she must cover her ears from a deafening clap and avert her eyes before they are blinded by the tremendous white flash.
Past spots in her vision she sees the unmistakable sight of a flaming blimp falling from the sky. The Raijin has shrunk to almost half of its original size but is growing again. She knows just what that means and makes a hasty dash for the stairs before it attacks again.
She can’t keep the smile from her face as she descends and occasionally trips on the crooked steps. With six other circles erected around the city over the past weeks, she and her late master have ensured that none of the balloons will be safe. Her creature can direct it’s attacks anywhere in the sky above her city.
She stumbles, almost cracking her head as the ground shakes and the sky flashes once again. Using a nearby tree for leverage she pulls herself up and looks to the east, another blimp in flames.
Yet something in the eastern sky disturbs her, a dozen little lights breaking away from the fire and the explosions, peeling into the darker sections of sky. They grow, a swarm of... she doesn’t know what, but it takes no genius to guess where they are headed.
“Shit!”
Abandoning the unreliable steps she breaks into a sprint down the side of the steep hill, catching herself on trees as she slides and loses balance but continuing the mad dash.
She wants to be nowhere near the Raijin when they come.
At the bottom of the hill she stumbles around in the dark, those flashes being hell on her night vision. Despite her earlier concerns she prays to every god she knows that the horse is still there.
She hears the slow clop of hooves to her left and the steed’s distinct whickering. Running to him she grabs the stallion’s neck with both arms and hugs him.
“You have no idea how much I love you!”
She has time enough to pull herself into the saddle before she hears a rumbling in the sky. Daring to look up she sees twelve low flying cylindrical shapes shoot past like oversized fireworks with what she’s astonished to see are men strapped to the outside.
“By the gods, Valis really is crazy!”
She kicks the horse into a gallop, hoping to put as much distance between herself and those flying madmen as possible. If one of them is smart enough to figure out that she's' a mage they might decide that killing her will solve the problem they’re about to have.
She turns her head as the hilltop flashes and thunder roars through the air. Six of the cylinders fall from the sky in flames as the survivors try to spread out.
To Leela’s surprise the sky lights up again but not with the power of Raijin. The men strapped to the flying machines fire a lightning of their own, powerful enough to almost rival the power of the elemental. She can not imagine a more idiotic thing to have done.
In an instant the Raijin towers perhaps a hundred feet over the hill and blasts the sky with a thousand lightning bolts. Even galloping through the park as fast as she can she feels the lightning in the air as her own hairs and the hairs of her steed stand to attention.
She counts the sound of four crashes.
Something isn’t right, nothing would have survived that attack, which means…
She pulls the crossbow from her saddlebag and scans the woods.
As expected there is a glow to her left and a second to her right. They’re flying low, near to the ground herding her and gambling that her death will bring about the death of her creature.
“Fat chance, assholes.” She says, magic crossbow at the ready and steers her mount through the trees, towards the flames of the nearest moving rocket.
All she needs is a glimpse of the bastard, all she needs is a good clear shot.
She spots a backlit shadow, a slender silhouette racing through the trees.
The crystal at the head of the crossbow flashes as she squeezes the trigger and looses a brilliant red lightning bolt of her very own. The ground shakes from the explosion and flaming debris rains through the forest starting several small fires in addition to the scorched trail left by the rocket.
Suddenly, Leela’s horse sharply turns, leaping nearly the height of a grown man and whinnying so loudly that it almost sounds like a scream. Leala’s heart jumps in her chest as she feels her skin prickling and everything where she just was bursts into flame with a blinding flash and every tree cracks into sizzling splinters.
Spinning in her seat she sees the massive metal rocket coming towards her, the man strapped to the top end aiming an evil looking gun as the man on the bottom guides the machine. She takes her own aim, grimly wondering who will get off the first shot.
Just before she fires, the steerman spots her weapon and spikes the rocket for the sky as she pulls the trigger. Her bolt misses by a hair but the enemy gunner’s shot also goes wild.
She cranes her neck as the rocket rises, readying her crossbow for another shot but they are too fast.
The sky lights up as thunder peals with a vengeance.
Leela hears the roar of the engine before she sees the rocket nosedive with a missing tailfin and a gunner whose legs are still burning.
The mad bastard is still trying to aim for her.
She shoots first but the pilot is a skilled son of a bitch. He manages to dodge and veer the rocket right for her.
“So, you wanna play chicken?” She asks. Sick of running she aims her stallion right at the oncoming rocket and charges.
She doesn’t remember pulling the trigger but the bolt of red lightning smashes into the rocket just the same. The gunner's side is blasted to a crisp and the pilot’s straps burn away. He is flung to the ground as the rocket spins like a flaming top before exploding in the woods.
There is a moment of utter silence that seems to drag on until the sky is alight once again and the air rings out with the boom of the Raijin’s attack.
From the cover of the woods she cannot see the target but she is heartened in her knowledge that her creature will continue it’s rampage until the skies above her city are clear.
She stays a while to catch her breath, the fires don’t seem to be spreading. The park becomes quiet again and she realizes that the rumble of the endless fall of bombs has stopped. She has stopped it.
“Help me!”
The voice is raspy and racked with pain. Her nurse’s sensibilities take over and she dismounts to find it’s source. A low groan leads her to a bloody man smashed against a fallen tree. The pilot tries to aim his side arm when she approaches but can't quite keep his grip and it falls.
She picks it up and examines it.
“I’ve never seen one of your weapons up close before,” she says. “They’re crude and ugly.”
“Nothing you say will change the fact that your country has lost,” he smiles in spite of his pain. “I only wish I could have settled things with you, mage.”
“Perhaps we’ve lost the war,” she admits. “However, I take pride in winning this battle.”
The night sky flares again and thunder claps as Raijin takes his next victim.
“If you’re going to shoot me, then shoot me.” The pilot says. “I can’t take another moment of your gloating.”
Instead Leela pulls a piece of parchment from her saddlebag and presses it against his most obvious wound. The parchment holds in place and the green circle drawn upon in glows ever so faintly.
“It should slow your bleeding,” she says. “That’s the best I can do for you.”
She spots several lights in the distant sky.
“More of your friends are coming for the party,” she says as she mounts her horse. “I don’t want to be here when they arrive. Not that killing me will stop Raijin from completing it’s work.”
She gallops away, not bound for the inner city and it's hospital but bound for the outer ring and it's gate.
She leaves the park behind her and rides past the bombed out manors of the merchant class. Every few minutes the Raijin will strike again, slapping the enemy forces from the sky like gnats.
She rides past the shattered western gate out into the farmlands. There she finds a wheatfield on a hill and takes in the sight of her ruined city as the sun rises.
On the western road she sees columns of refugees not unlike herself heading for the farms. On the eastern road she sees columns of troops. The war is still lost but at least a few more of her people have lived to see this sunrise and a great many more of the enemy have joined their victims in hell.