“Alister Burke, at your service,” he confirmed, affecting a seated bow.
“But, you’re a cat. At least, you’re supposed to be,” she said, taking him in. “What are you?”
“I’m a pixie. Have been the whole time. I chose the cat form when you summoned me; it’s all part of the bargain.”
She squinted. “What bargain? The Familiar spell?”
He shook his head. “No, the Familiar spell is the contract. The bargain is the agreement that humanity made with the pixies at the beginning. Our two species are from the same planet, and we made a deal that benefited us both very early on in our shared history, before we journeyed out into the stars.”
“So, we’re not from Earth,” Sara said, confirming her earlier speculation with Grimms. “How have we never seen your kind before?” Sara asked, confused.
“Our original world has been lost, unfortunately. The reason you have never seen us in our time on Earth is because we hide; we have the magic to help us do so,” he said, waving a hand at the empty whiteness.
Sara looked around her. “You’re saying this place is made of… magic?”
He nodded. “This,” he said, motioning around them, “is the Aether. When you filled me with your last bit of Aether, it brought us here, made us the same person, in a way. We are able to see each other as we truly are in this place. It’s part of the process.”
“So, you can change your shape to look like this back in the real world?”
He shook his head. “No. When the summoning happens, we pixies lose our ability to channel Aether, just like you lost your ability to make spellforms. It’s how the contract works. I become the spellform, and you become the power. It’s kind of like insurance to keep our species working together.
“I’m sorry, but we don't have a lot of time here. Our essences are mixing as we speak, and when they’re done, we will be reformed in the physical realm.”
“Wait, this is the only time I’ll be able to talk to you?” Sara said, panic slipping in.
He smiled. “No, we will be able to do something similar while we sleep. We can't do it all the time, because we would never get any rest, but we will see each other here again. The important things need to be said now, though.”
At a motion from Sara, he continued. “From now on, I will know what spellform you want without you having to say anything, and you will understand me a lot better than you have up until now. We won’t be able to talk so much as share feelings and emotions. We’ll get used to it—at least, that’s what my great-grandfather said.”
Sara could see, in the distance, a bluish haze begin to form all around them. Alister saw it as well, and began talking faster. “We don't have much time. The spell is completing. Uh, let’s see, things you need to know. Oh, right. You know how you can split your mind?” She nodded. “Well that is going to give us a huge bump in ability. I’ll be able to give you two spellforms at once.”
Sara's jaw dropped. “Two spells? That doesn't even seem possible.”
Alister smiled. “Yeah, I’m pretty excited to see it as well. Also, now that our essences have merged, you will have access to my Aether in addition to your own. It’s not much, but it’s a little bump. But the real advantage to a familiar is in your ability to recharge your Aether well much faster. We pixies can recharge at incredible rates compared to you humans. It compensates for our small Aether wells.”
He looked around at the encroaching haze, now at half the distance it had been when they first noticed it.
“Why did we make the contract in the first place?” Sara asked, trying to understand.
“Because we are better together,” Alister said matter-of-factly. “A mage with a familiar is the most powerful entity in the universe. One War Mage can take on an army. We aren’t all powerful, but we stopped two empires, the Teifen and the Galvox, in their tracks for millennia. Our alliance is mutually beneficial. Humans and pixies are the slowest to reproduce, and humans have the shortest life spans; this contract gives us the edge we need to be safe and persist in a hostile galaxy.”
He glanced at the haze, which was nearly upon them. Then he jumped up and took her hand, looking deep in her eyes. “Sara. You and I are the first pairing in thousands of years. We’re special. We need to use our power to protect those who cannot protect themselves. We have become a beacon of hope, but our enemies will notice that beacon just as easily. You are the first War Mage in remembered history. Don't be afraid. Be a leader the people will follow. Be smart. I love Cora, but she is wrong about you. You are special and creative and unflinching in the face of danger. Your recklessness makes you powerful and unexpected. This war will not be won with cautious decisions.”
She scooped him close in an embrace as the haze fell upon them. “We will be the blade in the night,” she whispered.
Then there was darkness
Chapter 41
Sara burst out of the double doors of the control room, her strides long and purposeful. She saw Baxter coming down the hall and gave him a bright smile. He waved and jogged to catch up to her as she continued toward the vault’s main room.
“Sara, there you are. I’ve been looking for…” He trailed off as he took her in.
She turned to him, a smile on her face that showed off her white teeth, “Yes, Baxter?”
His face was open in astonishment. “You’re, uh, glowing,” he said, looking at her body. Then he took a slight step back. “Your eyes.”
“What about them?”
“Well, they’re glowing, too. What the hell happened to you? Is that Aether?” he asked incredulously.
“I seem to have a bit of excess at the moment. I’m not sure how long that’s going to last, so I need to move quickly if I want to keep us all alive.” She turned and headed through the main room, drawing the stares of humans and Elif alike.
The Elif looked at her as if she were one of the Furies returned, vengeance made manifest; she supposed she was, in a way.
Her union with Alister had filled her well, overflowed it, and she could feel the Aether still coming on. She was going to use this gift to save as many people—humans, Elif and pixies—as she could. She could stop the carrier singlehandedly in this state, and she was not going to hold back. A war mage could supposedly stop an army…well, she was going to put that claim to the test.
She walked past the gun embankments and stepped into the elevator. When she turned, she realized that Baxter had followed her in. She smiled at the stupefied look on his face. As the doors closed, she saw that all eyes in the room were on her, and she was filled with a need to see those hopeful, wonder-filled faces free of this conflict. Then the doors were closed, and the elevator was rocketing up the shaft.
Her heart was determined in a way she had never understood was possible. All her life, she had thought of herself as second best to her twin, always trying to find the easy way, the quick solution. She had never been fully herself—just a shadow, trying to catch up.
But she was not second best. She was different. She and Cora were twins in body only. She was her own self, her own champion, and she had been comparing herself to someone on a different path.
'If you judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree, it will always feel like a failure,' as a well-known physicist once said.
Well, she was not attempting to climb trees anymore; she was about to go swimming for the first time. She felt a spring of joy and power she never knew she possessed.
“I get that you are about to do something spectacular, and after what I’ve seen you do today, that is saying something. But I just want to know that you’re all right,” Baxter said, staring at the closed doors as the elevator hummed along the shaft.
Sara smiled. She reached up and took Alister into her arms, cradling him close. He began to purr, and rubbed his face on her collarbone. She kissed him on the top of his head, and he pushed into it.
“I’m wonderful, Baxter. Absolutely wonderful,” she said, looking over at him.
; She admired this man. He was strong and hard and commanding, but he had a warm, soft center that made his men love and follow him. She could tell that he was concerned for her as a person—not as his captain, or as a tool to get him home, but as Sara Sonders.
“I feel like that is a bit of a workaround to what I’m asking,” he said, smiling over at her. “I want to know that you are not about to go do something stupid that is going to get you killed. I would like to get to know you better in the future, and I feel like you dying may put a damper on those plans.”
She leaned over, bumping him with her shoulder. “You really know how to wow the ladies, don't you? No, Baxter, I’m not planning on dying in some self-sacrificing, symbolic victory.” Her face swiftly hardened, and she stared daggers at her imagined enemy. “I am going to rip a starship from the sky and reacquaint the Teifen with the scariest thing in the galaxy.”
Baxter’s eyes were wide at the venom in her voice. “And what would that be?”
“A War Mage,” she purred.
Chapter 42
They stepped from the elevator, and Sara began jogging toward the vault door, Baxter close on her heels. They came to the stairwell full of rubble and stopped.
“It doesn't look like there’s a way through that. A crew will need to excavate for days before we can get out of here,” Baxter said, taking in the pile of rock and twisted stairs.
Sara focused on the pile, and as she thought of what she needed, Alister provided it. She smiled and kissed his head again as she held him close. Then she powered the spellform, forming a shield beneath the pile of rubble, and let loose a torrent of Aether. The shield shot straight up, pushing the stone and twisted metal, and even the sides of the walls, up and out into the night sky. It was like clearing a gun barrel with a shotgun blast.
Baxter stumbled back a few steps in surprise, staring at Sara as she stepped into the freshly cleared shaft.
“I guess that would work, too,” he said, eyes wide.
Sara hadn't even felt the drain on her Aether reserves. She took a deep breath and was readying her next spell when Baxter spoke again.
“Do you really think you can stop that carrier?” he asked in all seriousness.
She smiled. “I know I can. Don't worry, I’ll be back for you all soon.”
“If you get us out of this, I’ll buy you all the drinks my salary can afford.”
“I’m not that heavy of a drinker, but I will take you up on one or two,” she said with a wink.
She grabbed herself with a force spell and shot up the shaft like a redheaded bullet.
Shooting into the night sky, she realized why no other mages used this spell like she was now. Alister had to change the spell as they moved, each movement taking a different form of the force spell. Without a pixie morphing the spell instantaneously, a mage would have no control. She smiled and hugged him close again.
She stopped their ascent a few hundred meters above the city and took in the destruction. Many of the gun nests they had set up were nothing more than smoking craters. The Teifen were using smaller, slower rounds to keep the damage to a minimum to preserve what tech they could, but the destruction was still extensive. If troops and colonists hadn't gotten to the vaults, they would have been wiped out within minutes.
The command tent was gone, but she could see that the hospital tent was still half standing. She flew down and began searching through the tent until she found what she was looking for. Her armor had been toppled from its standing position, but was still intact. Pressing a finger to the forehead, she opened it up. She pulled out Alister's helmet, once she opened the side pouch of her suit. After clicking his helmet into place on his battlesuit, she then awkwardly lay down in her own until it recognized her, and closed around her like the folding wings of an angel. She powered it and waited as it came online.
She put Alister in the side pouch, latching it closed. “Sorry, buddy, but that’s the best I can do for now. This is going to get interesting, and I think I’m going to need my hands in a bit, and I wouldn't want you to fall off my shoulder,” she said, patting the pouch, and feeling him move inside. She felt a rush of acceptance from him, and smiled.
He was right; this empathic link was going to help.
She checked her weapons then looked to the sky. Sara could see the little flickering light of the carrier far above her, streaks of fire still raining from its cannons.
Alister gave her the spellform, and she launched herself into the air. They streaked upward at an incredible rate, the force spell counteracting the acceleration, which let them shoot through the air without feeling the g-forces. She formed a shield to protect them from the buffeting atmosphere. They were soon moving fast enough that it began to glow as the atmosphere began to burn with their passage. She poured on the power, increasing their speed. Soon she couldn't see anything but the orange-white glow roaring past the shield.
It took only a minute or two before the fire suddenly winked out, and she knew they had escaped the atmosphere completely. They were in space.
Sara smiled. She had to be the first human to get to orbit without a ship. Well, at least the first in several thousand years.
They were still moving incredibly fast, but it seemed to her they had practically come to a stop, without being able to feel the roaring passing of air. Spotting the carrier ahead she changed their direction to intercept it. She pushed on harder, wanting to get this over with.
They were still approximately five hundred meters out when Sara finally reversed the spell, dragging them both to a halt, matching orbital speed with the behemoth. She was a tiny speck floating in front of the enemy ship, not even large enough to warrant being shot at by the PDCs.
She opened a channel to the carrier, waiting until they accepted the call.
A view screen opened on her HUD, seemingly projecting the image out in front of her. A large ram-horned Teifen filled the screen. He had a look of anger on his face, but it turned to confusion when he saw Sara's face on his own screen.
“What is this?” the Teifen demanded, his voice deep and gravelly, but full of command.
Sara took in his black eyes and hair with a calm, bored look. His gray skin was wrinkled with frown lines, which deepened when she did not immediately answer.
“You are an inconvenience to me. You have come and attacked my people, and I cannot let it continue,” Sara said calmly.
The Teifen frowned, then began to laugh. “What do you plan to do about it, Elif? Talk me to death? You have no ships. Your troops, while good, are outnumbered, and I am smashing your precious colony to dust. You dare come to me and make threats? How unlike your soft Elif brothers and sisters. Surrender now, and I will keep you alive as a novelty—the Elif that thought to threaten their betters.” He ended with a smug look of humor.
Sara gave him a half smile. “I’m not here to negotiate with you. I just wanted to see the face of the thing I was about to end. You have attacked a colony of scientists and researchers. You have shown no mercy, so I will show you the same.”
His face became a mask of rage. “Listen here, you little Elif bitch—”
Sara cut him off. “I’m not Elif, Twirly Horns. I’m a human.”
The Teifen stood straighter in surprise. “A human? There hasn’t been a human in the galaxy for generations. You’re no human, but like with the humans, we will wipe you from the galaxy.”
“I am a human, Goat Face. But more to the point, I’m a War Mage.”
She cut off the call just as his eyes widened. He probably didn't believe her. Not yet.
She took a deep breath, and Alister, sending feelings of surprise and awe at what she was planning, delivered the spellform she required. She dumped untold amounts of Aether into it.
The spellform burned bright and perfect in her mind, unlike anything she had ever experienced, and what she knew she would more than likely never experience again. The well of her Aether was being filled as fast as she could use it, which she certainly did.
<
br /> When the spellform blazed like the heart of a star, she released it. A spear of force lanced forward at unimaginable speed, slamming its tip into the prow of the ship and ripping through the entire craft until the tip plunged from the bow. Kilometers long, the spear stayed rigid and firm.
Sara began changing the spellform, and dumped more Aether into it.
The spear of force began to expand, growing in diameter with every ounce of Aether added. The ship buckled and groaned, the force snapping supports and warping armor plating. The lights flickered as the electrical systems began to fail. The spear kept expanding, as steady and unstoppable as the orbit of planets.
Sara was screaming with effort, draining her Aether as fast as it would come. She felt a trickle of blood from her nose, but paid it no mind and pushed on.
In a final push, the spear of force exploded outward, tearing the carrier into chunks of scrap full of dying Teifen.
Sara let the spellform go and felt her well refill almost immediately. She smiled, watching the pieces of the once great ship float apart in a cloud.
She turned back to the planet and began the short journey to the surface.
She called Baxter, who had fortunately not returned to the vault, where their signals couldn't penetrate.
“Baxter, we need to get the troops back on the surface. The carrier is down, but there are still Teifen we need to take care of.”
“It’s down? It’s only been a few minutes,” he said in disbelief.
“Believe it. You owe me a drink, mister. I’ll be down in a minute or two.”
Chapter 43
Sara met Baxter as he was climbing out of the hole she had created when blasting the stairwell clear. She landed a few meters from him, causing him to nearly tumble back over the ledge, but he caught himself.
“Fuck, Captain. That is spooky as hell. How are you even doing that?” he asked, getting to his feet and heading toward some of the crates full of supplies that had survived the bombardment.
War Mage Chronicles- Part One Page 25