by Simon Archer
“Brilliant.” I started piecing my plan together for the others. “Petra, start throwing drones up into the air. Amalthea, close your sky dome off at the bottom. Shikun, get ready to light it up. Reggie, stick some wyrm-fire onto a drone before Petra throws it.”
Amalthea tore the drone she had in her teeth apart before diving down to the bottom edge of her floating dome of glyphs, while Shikun dropped through the swarm of anthophilan drones, tearing through a couple before landing on one knee, bracing herself with her wings in a gust of dust and wind. Petra’s giant tree arms reached downwards, just as Reggie smeared a few handfuls of wyrm-fire over the nearest drone. A moment later, the dryad’s spiky branches skewered that drone and several more on the ground and threw them into the air.
Before any of them could fall back down, Amalthea’s trail of glyphs began to close off their chances like a caterpillar's silk wrapping into a cocoon. Before the glyphs closed the dome into a floating sphere, Shikun doused the shrinking entrance in flame, trapping the drones with her silver fire. They buzzed around in their cage, shocking themselves against the glyph walls and desperately trying to put the fires out.
Amalthea finished her circular pattern, finally shutting in all of the drones and landing with the rest of us as the fire finally caught up with the wyrm-fire, creating a fiery explosion inside the sphere and engulfing many more drones. There wasn’t a single drone in sight in the village, they all managed their way into the dome one way or another.
With the immediate danger over, Petra’s tree form retreated back into her normal, slender one as she pulled her legs out from the dirt, and Amalthea landed unsteadily by Reggie and me.
“Not to disparage your plan,” the sphinx said, wobbling from side to side from all the spinning she just did, “but these glyphs won’t hold forever, and the fire isn’t burning hot enough to consume all of the air in time. If you were hoping to suffocate them to death--”
“Nothing so cruel.” I firmly held Amalthea’s giant sphinx head in my hands, stabilizing her drifting pseudo-vertigo. Since they didn’t already know what my plan was, I could tell the Khalati Record was fading with Amalthea’s strength. “I mean, not that they wouldn’t deserve it, trying to attack an innocent village and all, but I’ve got something much quicker in mind. You feeling okay?”
“Yes.” The large winged cat shook her head in response. “I’m feeling alright.” The fires inside the floating trap finally died down, and the flying soldiers drifted down slowly towards the bottom of the sphere, holding their necks as they began to run out of air.
“Do you think you could go to the top of this thing and open one glyph?” I asked her.
“For you, my savior, anything.” Amalthea shot upwards, pushing all of us back in the wake of her takeoff. She zoomed around the edge of the runic field, reaching the top in no time. With a swipe of her claws, she dispelled one of the glyphs, flying back down the other side.
In an instant, the dying fires inside the glyph bubble burst into an explosion, lighting up the entire sphere like a humongous disco ball. As quickly as they came, the flames vanished, leaving nothing behind of the remaining drones but ash.
That was a little trick I’d learned in science class. Light a fire inside a large enclosed space with plenty of fuel, and it’ll eat up all the oxygen. Then, cut a small hole in the top, and the oxygen from the outside gets pulled into a vacuum, creating an explosion of chemical reactions. I was glad I was able to recreate it on such a large scale.
“Bloody fucking hell!” Reggie lost some of his posh demeanor at the sight of the ball of fire he helped create, then straightening his shirt to regain composure, Silver curled up at his feet. “Did you mean to do that?”
“I didn’t expect it to turn out so smoothly,” I told him, “but, yeah, I was going for something similar.”
“Impressive use of natural forces, my savior,” Amalthea said, breathing a little heavy. “I couldn’t have devised a plan half that clever even with an hour in the Khalati Record.”
“I’m sure you’d have thought of something.” Petra walked up to where we were standing. “It was still very tricky, Will.”
“That’s a lot of ash left over in the ball,” Shikun pointed out. All the drone’s ash, bones, and armor had collected near the bottom, and it was enough to fill a hot tub, to be sure. The sphere was still right over the town, and that just sounded like an ecological hazard, let alone a huge mess. “What are we going to do with that?”
“Do not worry, my friends,” Amalthea panted out. “Now that all of the drones are gone, this will be much easier.”
She spread her wings out as more runic glyphs from the Khalati Record appeared. Her eyes glowed with the same symbols, her paw raised to show yet another rune floating in front of it. The sphere began to vibrate, and all of the armor rained down from the sky, clumping into one big pile in the town’s fairway. The rune on her paw spun, blurring into a white circle of light before evaporating into nothing.
As the glyph disappeared, the circle of glyphs shrunk twenty sizes in less time than we could tell what had happened. Smaller and smaller, it shrunk until it was about the size of a baseball, not a single mote of ash escaping. As the ball slowly lowered down to us, I held my hands out to catch it. When I caught a better glimpse of it, I saw a glittering sphere inside a sphere of tiny glyphs. The glyphs dissolved into streams of light, and the diamond orb dropped into my hand. The light glistened inside the surprisingly heavy diamond as I toyed with it.
“Could you not have done that in the first place?” Reggie asked the great cat as I placed the diamond in Reggie’s bag. A loud thump resounded behind all of us as we turned to see Amalthea on the ground, her chest filling and emptying with gallons of air. “Right, shouldn’t push the good kitty any more than we already have, eh?”
I could feel the Khalati Record, now a subtle buzz in my head, slowly leave as we were all disconnected from it.
“Good call, Reggie.” I went over to Amalthea, stroking her hair as I knelt down beside her. She smiled in her semi-conscious state as she pushed into me. Shikun and Petra knelt beside her as well, Petra laying down on the sphinx’s furry belly as she fell into an exhausted slumber.
“Maybe it’s time we get some rest.” Petra nuzzled against Amalthea’s fur, her eyes weighed down to closing. Her feet bled into the ground as it swallowed them, Petra smiling her way into a deep sleep.
“Oh, thank the Gods!” Shikun slammed down into a seating position, wrapping her wings around herself. “I didn’t want to say anything, but back-to-back days of monster fighting is killing me.” She scooted herself back until she was laying on Amalthea, finding her way to dreams nearly as quickly as the dryad she lay beside.
Thinking about it, this could be one of the drawbacks of the Brand of Freedom. Even though she could release limitations and allow for a release of hidden potential, Libritas couldn’t supply the energy to accommodate all of those avenues of release. If we were to continue our quest to liberate Etria, we’d have to be careful how much we pushed ourselves.
“I never realized the danger,” Libritas called into my head as she sensed my worries, “but it makes perfect sense. Freedom can release hidden reserves of energy for the branded to use, but once that energy is gone, it may take a while to build up again. We’ll need someplace safe for the night.”
“Well, we are in a village,” I said, looking upon the buildings eroded by neglect. “Their hospitality might just be our saving grace.”
I just had to hope that they weren’t savage as well. Otherwise, we had another fight on our hands.
15
I felt a splitting headache come on like my skull was going to crack open. My body, my upper back especially, felt like it was about to burst open like a zit. A quiet grunt escaped my lips from the pain as I tensed my hands to distract myself. As quick as the pain came, it vanished as if it were never there. I tried not to look distressed about it. Even if that was some sort of poison from Atroclus we didn’
t know about, I didn’t have the time to nurse it now.
“What was that, William?” Libritas said to me, a quake to her voice. “The pain was almost unbearable. I don’t know how you’re still--”
“We’ll worry about it when we’re safe,” I told her. “Right now, we’ve got priorities.”
“Are you thinking we’ll stay here, master William?” Reggie looked around in the town. “We’d need to get the girls inside one of these buildings and fortify it, but I believe that could work.” He didn’t seem to notice my ‘seizure,’ for lack of a better word for it.
While we’d been discussing our situation, the townspeople slowly opened their doors and peeked out to see what was happening. They were all short and stout, like barrels with arms and legs. Their faces were dirty and dry, and the beards on the men where monstrously frizzy. Each of their faces had a beet-red, sunburned nose almost the size of the diamond I held. As they all looked around, they carefully stepped out into the fairway of their town. Their clothes were barely held onto them by strings and straps, hardly covering up anything. The women seemed to be deftly aware of this, pulling up whatever cloth was available onto themselves for the sake of decency.
“These would be dwarves,” Libritas informed me before I could ask the question. “For their lack of height, they are the best craftsmen in Etria. Try not to be too uncomfortable with their… unorthodox manner of speech.”
Alright, so exactly how I thought dwarves would be. It just served as more evidence to me that Earth myth was derived from Etrian reality. As much as I loved to learn, I was glad that I didn’t have to process too much new information considering our situation.
“Did you get the lot of them?” one of the people said, his beard frizzier and greyer than the others. The hair on the top of his head must have retreated to the sides of it and his face. You could barely see his beard ruffle as he spoke in the equivalent of a Highland Scottish accent. And it was completely coherent. I was glad to see the savage impulse was wearing off for now. I wouldn’t say that it was terribly unorthodox, though.
“It’s hard to explain,” Libritas sent. “Just wait. They’ll show you a good example.”
“Yeah, we got them.” I coaxed the dwarves out of hiding. “It’s safe again.”
“Thank you, laddy.” The short, grey-faced man sighed all of his worries out. “Soon as I could remember me own name, those damn drones came flying in to kill us. Damn brain’s been fuzzy for gods know how long!” He walked up to me, and his head came about to the top of my ribcage, his nose adding a few inches to his height as he looked up to see me. “Name’s Thorton Hammerstone, by the way. Do you know what’s happening with all the fuzziness?”
“Yeah!” another one of them called out, his beard red like a fox. “And why can we start thinking now?”
“I can explain everything in just a bit,” I said as I raised my voice to address the town. “But first, these women need a safe place to rest until they regain their strength. We don’t know when those drones may come again, or how many more of them they’ll be. We’ll need a good, defensible spot until we can come up with a plan to handle this permanently. Is there any place in town that’s built sturdier than the others?”
“Oh, the mayor’s house is pretty strong,” Thorton said. “And plenty of room. Your friends can hole themselves up in there awhile.”
“Perfect. Thank you!” I said. “Do you know if the mayor will be needing it?”
“No, I won’t be needing it,” Thorton replied. So, he was the mayor? Why didn’t he just say that?
“That’s what I meant,” Libritas said to me. “They often talk in misleading ways, leaving out key bits of information when they explain things. It can be… frustrating. Welcome to Hillrock.”
“The drones will be back?” one of the women asked as she finished tying the shoulders of her dress.
“I don’t know for sure, but we can’t take any chances.” I walked over to Shikun, scooping her up in my arms. She pulled her arms around my neck as she continued to sleep. “Can you help me get the girls in, Reg?”
“I think I can carry the dryad,” Reggie said, kneeling down to do just that.
“We’ll have to come back for Amalthea,” I said as I walked towards the largest building I could see. Silver came hopping along, like a shepherd dog leading sheep.
“Where are you guys going?” Thorton asked.
“… to your house?” My tone belied my uncertainty.
“Oh!” Thorton perked up. “That’s this way.” Thorton pointed in the opposite direction.
I let out a breath, my sigh carrying a tinge of irritation.
“How about you show us the way, old boy?” Reggie suggested.
“That’s a good idea!” Thorton said, standing almost completely still. Already, I was at the end of my nerves. We all stood there for at least five seconds-worth of eternity.
“You should do that now,” I said, maybe a bit more rudely than I was going for. I was tired, too, but I couldn’t rest up until we were completely safe. Maybe that’s what the pain from before was about. I just needed to get some rest.
I would have loved to take them back to the Stalker tribe, far away from any immediate danger now that the Great Beasts weren’t agitating the wildlife, but transporting the girls there would be stupid when we’re so exposed. We couldn’t leave until they rested up. We’d just have to hope that the anthophilan drones would need time to recuperate their losses before launching another attack. And without most of my circle to bear the brunt of the forces, we’d be in serious trouble if they did.
Thorton eventually shook into action, leading the way to his own house up this hill aways. It was like the other wooden buildings around town, but with a second story. Which, you know, didn’t mean a whole lot with these dwarves being so short. As we took the girls inside, placing them on couches so small that their shins hung off the edges, I looked to Thorton.
“Get some healers. They’re wounded.” I told him as I started heading out the door. I motioned over to Reggie. “I can take Amalthea’s head if you take her back legs.”
“Of course, give me the arse, how gentlemanly of you.” Reggie smirked as we both headed out of the house, ducking our heads to exit the door.
“Do you guys need to move the sphinx, too?” Thorton called from inside.
Of course, we did, you absolute rockhead. I swear to God, I was considering braving the drones.
“Yes,” I said, hissing a bit as I finished the word. “We need to move Amalthea, too.”
“We can take care of that, no problem!” Thorton gave out a loud whistle as he exited the house. He put his hands up to his mouth like a funnel. “Hey, bring the sphinx up here, too!”
I heard the scattered shouting of a few dwarves agreeing to help, followed shortly by Amalthea’s passed-out body riding atop about eight dwarves climbing the hill, all carrying her above their heads. They marched and grunted in unison all the way on their approach to the mayor’s house. Silver followed them along in the same way, panting and hopping as they went. When they reached the door, they stopped, and it was plain why.
She was not going to fit through a dwarf door, no matter how you angled or pushed her.
“Think we can fit her?” one of the dwarves said.
“Think we can fit her,” another dwarf answered.
“Just needs a little stretch, is all,” a third dwarf said as two dwarves broke off the formation, walking up to the wooden railing surrounding the porch to the house.
As they rubbed their hands on it, the railing bent to how they formed it, peeling out of the way to create a much wider opening. They both went to the door as well and pushed against the frame until it moved wider, stretching the top beam to accommodate it. One of the dwarves jumped onto the other and pushed the doorframe upwards, making it more than tall enough to fit a bear through. The one jumped off the other, and they returned to underneath Amalthea as they carried her easily through the newly sized opening.
It must be easy to craft almost anything when it bends to how you shape it without any tools. I knocked against the peeled apart railing just to see what it felt like. Still as hard as wood. It gave me an idea.
“Hey, Thorton,” I called to the absent-minded mayor as the dwarf platoon laid Amalthea down next to the other girls. “What could you do in the way of making weapons out of tattered anthophilan armor?”
We could use all of the tools we could get, at this point, and these dwarves seemed like the perfect people to get them from. We could kit ourselves out in something more substantial for the upcoming battle, and we might be able to arm the people, too. The more they could defend themselves, the better off we’d be in the long run.
“Yeah, we could do that,” Thorton said happily.
“Do you think you could get enough to supply your citizens with some armaments?”
“Oh, for sure.” The barrel-bodied man laughed. “Maybe honeysteel is hard to work with for your kind, but we’ve got every metal licked.”
“What is honeysteel, old boy?” Reggie asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s the gold-colored metal that’s found in these hills,” Thorton explained. “Very durable, almost impossible to shape with hammers and forges. Unless you’re a dwarf.” I was willing to bet that those spears the drones had were made of the same metal. That’d be handy to have around.
“Do you think I could borrow some, William?” Reggie had a tint of excitement in his voice. I nodded in approval, prompting him to run up to Thorton. “Can I work with one of your smiths? I have some things I need to be crafted.”
“Yeah, sure,” Thorton said. “Just pick a dwarf. We’re all pretty good at working with it.”
“You should start getting your townspeople working on creating more weapons and armor,” I told the mayor. I was no longer going to mince words or waste time.
“Oh, yeah, that’s a smart idea!” Thorton agreed with me, again standing completely still.