by Chris Fox
This time I had nothing but time. Clouds swirled below us, breaking occasionally to provide a look at tall, bony mountains and deep, swampy valleys, and more than one active volcano. The entire continent had a primeval feel, like some ancestral world that had given birth to us all.
As we cruised lower a buzzing began in my head, and my sight activated. The outline of a colossal planet-sized dragon appeared embedded in the land itself, her skeleton clearly laid out across the continent below. Almost all the magic had been stripped from the body, but worship flowed from much of the world, strengthening it daily.
“There’s the Kamiza!” Briff angled toward a specific mountain, and my HUD showed us approaching the correct coordinates.
A large basalt keep had been erected atop the mountain, low and squat, and impregnable to any attacker except by air. Within the keep’s walls sat a dozen individual buildings, with figures flowing between them like ants.
As we flew lower ants became hatchlings, with a smattering of Ifrit lighting their ranks. They must have been students, and probably a few teachers. This place wasn’t some backyard Kamiza. This was a full on military academy.
A missive suddenly pinged on my HUD, and I accepted it. A female hatchling with the same earthy scales as Kahotep appeared. She had a scar burned down one side of her face, which had taken an eye. “You’re the human who thinks he has what it takes to be an eradicator?”
“That’s me.” I resisted the urge to snark, as was my nature. “Can you tell us where we should land?”
“Your Wyrm will be sent to his own training, on another mountain.” Her good eye narrowed and she blinked that slitted eye at me. “As for you? First you’ve got to survive in order to land. Defend yourself, pup. Or die. It’s all the same to me.”
“Do you have a name?” Maybe if I kept the missive going I could reason with her.
“Names only matter to the living.” The missive died. A quartet of spellfighters streaked out of the keep, and began a winding pass that would take them around in my direction. So much for our childhood fantasy.
“Looks like I’m on my own, bud. I hope your training goes well.” I kicked off Briff’s back, and got ready to defend myself.
8
Arrivals
I didn’t know what to expect from the fighters heading my way, but the objective seemed pretty clear. I wanted to reach the courtyard where I could see the instructor who’d missived me, or thought the defiant hatchling was her as she stared directly up at me.
The sleek black fighters screamed my way, so I dove for the deck and began a series of erratic blinks downward to change my position. All four fighters launched spells at me, each a tight ball of green fluid that hissed past the position I’d just occupied. Had I not blinked, at least two would have hit. Possibly three.
I guess this was a live fire exercise. She wasn’t just rattling my chain or testing my resolve. I could die.
I flipped around so I was falling backwards, then yanked Dez from my holster and aimed at a spot directly above me. I cast a darkness spell, and amplified the magnitude as much as I could to create a wide disk of impenetrable black.
The spell blocked line of sight, and in that instant I placed Dez’s barrel against my chest, and cast a camo spell, the very same one that had originally saved my ass back when all this adventuring had begun.
My body rippled and changed until it perfectly resembled a patch of cloud, and I plummeted into cover just in time to see my darkness spell explode. They’d countered it.
The fighters streaked down past my position, and began to circle the keep like a flock of protective birds. I’d lost them, but was still four hundred meters off the deck. If I broke cover they’d get a full pass.
I could rely on my camo spell, but they’d be scanning for movement. They were fast and they were skilled. I’d take damage. Possibly more than one pass. If I’d had full illusion I could have used invisibility. I didn’t though. If I reached for the Word I could have Guardian teleport me directly there, but I suspected they’d consider that cheating.
I needed to alter my thinking. Traditionally I relied on dream, fire, and void. More recently I’d received life. What could I do that I couldn’t do before?
Life could heal damage. But life could also create wards, which I didn’t really ever use. Hmm. What if I warded the armor, used camo, and dropped? If it worked, the wards wouldn’t be tested. If they were tested, maybe they would be enough to keep me alive.
One way to find out. I fed life magic into my armor and willed the ward into place. A white sphere appeared over the paper doll on my HUD. It didn’t seem to leave any visible trace, so I said screw it and dropped from the cloud.
I used void to slow my fall, enough that the camo spell continually adjusted me to look like whatever part of the sky I was in. At first I thought maybe it was working, but about fifteen seconds later, with three hundred meters to go, the fighters broke into sudden motion.
They screamed toward me, and a quartet of spells converged on my position. In that moment madness overtook me. An idea seized me, but I had to act on it right then, without understanding if it would work.
I zoomed into the path of one of the spells, and shoulder-checked it with my armor. The ball broke into a shower of sizzling acid, which coated my ward, and quickly ate through it. It started into the armor, and yellow flared all over the paper doll.
I went limp. My body tumbled toward the ground, cartwheeling wildly as I gave up control. The fighters broke off, and began to land. They’d bought it. I played dead as the altimeter counted down. Two hundred meters. One hundred. Fifty. Twenty. Five.
I seized control of the armor, and brought it into a hover two meters off the deck. My paper doll had gone red at the shoulder, and yellow in all the surrounding areas. It would take a day or three, but the armor should take care of that entirely on its own. At least nothing had gone black. That would take far longer, and sometimes took Vee’s efforts to restore.
“Without that fancy armor,” the female hatchling with the scar boomed up at me, her hands still on those scaly hips, “you’d be dead right now. Your trick worked. You made it to the ground. But you brute forced it. I didn’t give you any specific time criteria. You could have stayed in that cloud for hours. You could have used the clouds to slink many kilometers away, and then come back on foot. Or dug a tunnel. You got into a fight you couldn’t win, and any other cadet who might have tried that would be dead now. Thus far? I am not impressed.”
I noted the quartet of students training with her, all in spellarmor. Three were scout class, but one wore a suit of heavy armor that looked similar to the Inuran Mark IX stuff. How did they manufacture it? Did they have their own artificers? So many questions.
“Come inside.” The instructor turned, her tail slashing at the air behind her as she entered the stone building. “All of you.”
I let the other four students go first, none of whom made any move to speak with or greet me. All looked at me, but I couldn’t see anything about them under their armor, any more than they could me.
The interior was barren. No mats. No training equipment. An empty room, save for a variety of weapons mounted to one far wall. Dozens of swords, axes, daggers, and other weapons sat on individual pegs where they could be retrieved quickly. Every last weapon had been forged from magical materials, and must have hailed from a dozen worlds or more.
“You said names were for winners.” I ordered my helmet to slither back into my armor, and stepped boldly before the hatchling, who stared impassively down at me with her good eye. “I’m Jerek of the Word of Xal. I’m here to learn to fight.”
“I am called Ghora.” She gave it simply, her forked tongue flicking through her fangs. “I am a trainer of killers. I teach people who are already skilled in combat how to become living weapons. To use their bodies, and their minds, in unison. You have a shaky foundation, but Frit has asked that I teach you. I told her I will, but that I will treat you as any other student.�
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“So all training involves live fire?” There was a notch of anger in my voice, but I kept it restrained. “No warning?”
“Class,” she boomed, and they all straightened in their armor. “When does an assassin offer warning before killing you?”
“Never!” they chorused in perfect galactic common. One had a Shayan accent.
“And when do we let down our guard?” she boomed as she folded her arms and fixed me with that flat stare.
“Never!” Another chorus.
“From this day forward,” she growled, leaning still closer, “you will not remove your helmet, even when sleeping. You will always assume someone is coming to kill you, and many times you will be right. You are not here to mate, or make friends, or report to your people on the goings on of the Krox. You are here to learn to fight, and survive, before war engulfs us all.”
I willed my helmet to slither back over my face, and said nothing. What could I really say to that?
“Today’s lessons are over. Anuket, take the pup to the barracks and get him situated.” Something akin to malevolent amusement entered her expression, and a bit of acid fell hissing from her jaws to crackle on the floor. “I’ll make you into a weapon, or I will break you. Sleep well, pup.”
She turned from the class without any formal gesture, and the students tripped over themselves to exit. All save the one in heavy armor, with the cannon. She waited by the exit, so I approached.
“Follow me,” the Shayan accent said. She turned and slowly exited the room, in no hurry as she departed the first building and made for a nearly identical building, just as squat and low and ugly.
Once inside I paused to scan the interior. There were two doors, the one I’d entered through and one at the opposite end of the room. Rows of bunks in blocks of five lined every wall and the middle of the room. The vast majority were unoccupied, though there was a group of hatchlings at the far end.
My new classmates moved to their own area, as far from the hatchlings as they could get and be in the same building.
Anuket wrenched off her helmet and tossed it on a bunk, then shook her head as if flinging off sweat. Instead, droplets of magma went flying off and spattered on the floor. She resembled Frit, but her hair had cut nearly down to stubble, and she’d carved a sigil into her cheek like a tattoo.
“Anu is short for Anuket. Call me whatever you want.” She set her cannon next to the helmet, and rolled her shoulder in the socket.
“I thought we never took off our helmets.” I glanced around, and noted that all three of my companions had removed theirs.
“That was one of the earliest lessons,” a male hatchling rumbled from the neighboring bunk. “Don’t take your helmet off when you aren’t safe. If there’s any chance Ghora will catch us we have it on. But we have a rotation on watch that will alert us well before she leaves her own building. We have plenty of time to get ready before she shows up.”
“I’m Jerek.” I extended a hand.
“I don’t care.” The hatchling withdrew a datapad, and began reading.
“Grab a bunk.” Anu nodded at an empty one. “Watch out for the hatchlings. They’re followers of Nebiat, like Ghora. They fight without honor or pity, and they will see you as a threat.”
“But you don’t?” I moved to my bunk, and allowed my helmet to slither off.
All of them laughed at that in a way that made it very clear none of them considered me dangerous. Partly I was offended.
Mostly I resolved to prove them all very, very wrong.
9
Spirit Mushroom
I didn’t get much sleep that first night. I hated being in strange places, though being inside my armor helped as I at least felt like I could defend myself if attacked while sleeping.
That gave me time to study the others, who had no trouble sleeping. Each wore their helmets, of course, and I noticed all but Anu slept with their weapons cradled in their hands. She kept her cannon next to the bed, but I noted the bulge under her pillow I suspected might belong to a weapon.
The hatchlings across the barracks stayed up late into the night laughing and playing some sort of dice game. They blared their music, heavy metal synth, and while it wasn’t terrible it was definitely not my first choice when trying to sleep. I activated the noise dampeners in my armor, which would leave me more vulnerable, but allowed me to sleep.
Sometime around three I finally drifted off, and came awake moments later at five AM when Ghora’s booming voice split the darkness. “On your feet, mages. Someone might die today. Likely to be the slowest.”
I rocketed to my feet, a touch of void carrying me from the bunk and onto my feet. I wasn’t the slowest…the hatching who’d refused to give me his name was. Everyone eyed him with a mixture of pity and relief as Ghora’s attention narrowed down to just him.
“You weren’t quite done dreaming. Is that it, Hapi?” She stalked toward him, and thrust her scarred eye socket in his face. “Do you see this? Do you know how I got it, hmm? Have you ever wondered? I got it by being slow, egg waste. If you are last again I will send you out into the burning fields to die.”
“Yes, Ghora.” The suddenly pliant hatchling snapped to attention. I had the sense that she meant it.
“Outside. All of you,” Ghora growled. She stalked into the courtyard where I’d landed, and I noticed that the acidic burns where my armor had landed were gone, and the grass had regrown. That was the sort of magic I always associated with life, but I’d learned in school that earth magic had a connection to the land, and to all the plants that dwelled upon it. Maybe I was seeing it.
I followed the rest of the class to form the end of a crisp line, each soldier standing loosely, ready for combat. Ghora watched us assemble, then spit a gob of acid into the grass.
“You lot are even more pathetic today. Do you know why?” She stalked up and down the front of the line, daring any of us to meet her gaze. I did, through my helmet, and had the sense that somehow she knew. “Because this walking accident is now a part of your ranks, and your pathetic-ness is an average of everyone in those ranks. It was already low. Now it’s impressively low. Jerek, do you possess any skills in stealth? Or are you as clumsy there as you seem to be with everything else?”
“I can camouflage myself.” She already knew that much, so I continued. “I don’t have full illusion. I still need air magic.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” Her foot blurred toward my face, and I instinctively ducked out of the way. She reset her stance after I dodged. “I asked if you have skills in stealth. Can you approach an enemy position in the dark without giving yourself away?”
“Yes.” I clamped my jaw shut. I wasn’t the stealthiest person to ever live, but I wasn’t half bad, and with the addition of my magic I could generally circumvent most threats without them ever knowing I was there.
“Wonderful.” She turned to the rest of the line, and offered an inauthentic smile. “Isn’t that wonderful, class?”
“Yes, Ghora!” They chorused in the way this sort of trauma must have induced in them. She paused and surveyed us once more. “I’m glad you agree. Today you have a very simple task. Directly to the south, there is a cave at the end of the ravine. Make it into the cave, and pick a spirit mushroom. Bring that mushroom back to me. Then you poor bastards are going to eat it, and have the worst trip of your lives. Do not be last. GO!”
We scrambled out of that room, each person using whatever magic they could for thrust. Anu used fire. The other three armored figures all used earth to conjure acid, which made it abundantly clear why all their buildings were carved from dense stone.
I levitated with void and zipped after them, following them to the south. We gained about fifty meters of elevation, enough to pass over trees that were just as low and squat as the houses. The ravine lay directly ahead of us, and I could probably have taken the lead, but I didn’t like being the first into a cave to pick something called a spirit mushroom.
That implied i
t grew near a spirit Catalyst, and Nebiat was famous for only one Catalyst. That of the goddess who’d given the planet its name. If I was near the Tomb of Nebiat, then odds were good one or more species of spirit lurked nearby. Angers, spites, wraiths, and worse might be in that cave.
Yeah, definitely not interested in being first inside. I felt inside the pouch on my belt, and relaxed when I realized I still had a large bag of salt. Enough for a line around myself, or to block a doorway or three in an emergency.
Anu made it into the cave first, with all three scout suits tight on her heels. They fanned out in different directions, and I followed them into a massive cavern complex with many different lava tubes leading off. Each student grabbed their own tube, so I picked one at random and floated silently up it.
The moment I heard a keening wail in the distance I activated my sight, and through the rocky wall spotted the aura of a powerful spectral unliving. I’d loaded my armor with all sorts of data schematics, and waited patiently for it to identify my soon to be friend.
“A banshee?” I scanned the schematics and liked them less with every word. They used sonic attacks to shatter bone, spellarmor, and anything else hit. It could liquify my heart if I took a direct shot. “Crap. Salt won’t stop their attacks.”
That meant I needed to get the drop on her. I crept forward, millimeter by millimeter as I worked my way around the corner and into range to take a shot. The spectral glow grew more intense as I approached, and I heard muttering in ancient draconic.
“We have been wronged! Wronged!” The voice was nails on a chalkboard, even through my suit. Get that woman something to gargle with. “We will have vengeance. We will escape. We will make them pay. All pay.”
This lady sounded balanced. I slowly drew Dez from my holster and sighted over the banshee’s chest. Theoretically it didn’t really matter where I hit her, and I wanted to go with the largest target.