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Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1)

Page 57

by Scott Browder


  Morgan nodded slowly. “I think I can do that…but not with a seven-point circle.” She frowned, glancing down at the stone. “Three-pointed triangle?”

  “Just so,” Biggles responded, “but do not link them yourself. That would seal the circle. What we need is, think of—”

  “A magical panic room!” Morgan exclaimed, clapping her hands. “So she can link them if she wants to!”

  The Necromancer appeared impressed. “Exactly! Where did you get your sorcery training?”

  “Oh, nowhere,” she replied. “I’m just winging it.” She grimaced, rolling her shoulder. “Least I haven’t blown my arm off yet…”

  The Necromancer gave her a questioning look, and Dana giggled knowingly from outside the flattened area of dirt. Morgan gathered more magic, drawing a circle with three equidistant runes on its edges. Biggles walked up to Terisa, holding out his hands.

  “Now we need the shards, and the weapon,” he said, his voice low and reassuring. She handed the Colt to the Necromancer without resistance, but clutched the small leather bag, reluctant to part with it. Biggles led her forward instead of trying to take it from her, the pair stopping just outside the larger circle. He held the pistol out over the ‘panic room’, and Morgan felt his magic rise as he activated the runes. The gun floated gently in the air, held in place by the magic when he retracted his hand.

  “As soon as you’re ready, put the pieces of her gem in the circle,” he told Terisa gently. “Her own animus will activate the magic, and she’ll be able to choose.”

  The Titan shuffled forward almost gingerly, leaning down and sniffing at the magical array as Terisa stood in silence.

  “No bindings. Good magic.”

  The hulking form backed away from the group, nodding down at Biggles and baring oversized crystal tusks at Morgan in a proud smile. The Huntress stepped up to the central circle. Gently, she opened the leather pouch and poured the shards into her hand. The original gem had shattered into dozens of tiny pieces, but she’d only been able to recover several large fragments. Almost reverently, Terisa pushed the shards into the circle. They floated above her hand for a few moments, then began to drift toward the center as the seven runes began to glow.

  What happened next Morgan would remember as long as she lived. The gem fragments flared with a bright, opalescent light, hues of color she’d never seen before flickering deep in their depths. When they glowed bright enough to rival the sun, they suddenly crumbled into tiny, scintillating motes. Terisa sobbed into her hands as the motes spun, swirling in complicated patterns Morgan could never hope to describe, before pulling into the center of the circle. A pulse of magic rippled outward, a sensation Morgan had only ever felt from her own [Soul Anchor].

  Suddenly, in the space of a heartbeat, the figure of a woman appeared where the motes had been. She almost seemed as a statue, one made of colored glass, chipped in places and shot through with cracks. Everyone stood silent—even Terisa—and held their breath.

  The figure inside the circle was silent, too, but not for lack of trying—the barrier within which she stood blocked what were clearly desperate, agonized screams, the woman arching her back and clutching her head as the cracks across her body raced along her form, spiderwebbing into tiny fissures.

  “What’s wrong?” Terisa demanded, rounding on the Necromancer, eyes rimmed with red.

  “The shard was broken, and so was her soul,” he replied gently. “But look, she’s healing,” he continued, taking her arm and turning her back to the center.

  Indeed, the damage to the figure suddenly began to smooth over and disappear, working backward from the finest fissures to the largest chips. Terisa let out her breath in a great sigh as her sister finally appeared to relax. Her hands fell away from her head, and she looked up.

  Althenea had been beautiful in life, Morgan realized. Standing slightly taller than her sister, with wavy brown hair she permitted to fall, unbound, to her waist, rather than wearing it bound in a braid. She must have been in there for decades, she realized. She’d been told the day before that Terisa was the younger sister, but persisting in the soul gem had spared Althenea the ravages of time, and Terisa no longer bore her sister’s youthful features. I think, though, they must have been twins. Something in the eyes, and the set of their features…

  Althenea had moved to stand opposite her sister; Morgan took the opportunity to further compare them. She had reformed wearing what she must have worn when she died; where Terisa wore simple hide and linen in sylvan tones of brown and green, Althenea stood in exquisitely worked, well-fitted leather. The thicker parts of the armor over her chest and shoulders were embroidered in green and gold, shot through with the memory of protective magic that Morgan would have dearly loved to study, had she the time. Ghostly daggers were strapped to the woman’s thighs, and hints of metal peeked out from under the edges of her bracers.

  Terisa reached out, fingers and hand flattening against the barrier that separated the living and the dead. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I stopped paying attention, I turned my back for just a moment.”

  Biggles withdrew, allowing the Huntress and her sister this moment together. He turned to Morgan and murmured, “Give her a moment, then link the three circles together. That’ll let her make the choice.”

  Morgan nodded, then stepped back as well. For the first time since arising, she glanced at the rest of the Expedition’s survivors, aimlessly milling about the wagons. Most of them seemed too overcome by a combination of fear and awe to approach, averting their gaze whenever she looked their way. Only the beastkin seemed unaffected.

  Her father had lumbered back to the wall of the fort, leaning against the stone and picking his teeth with a broken tree limb almost as big as a wagon axle. A piece of something she was certain was the leg bone of some unfortunate human came loose, only to be popped back into his mouth a moment later.

  “Eww,” she said, looking up at the hulking form. “Remember your manners, Old Man!”

  He made a noise she thought was a burp and continued chewing. She could faintly hear Terisa talking to Althenea, although the barrier let no sound return from the spirit.

  “The choice is yours. Just like the first time, when the Oracle helped us, you can go, or you can stay.”

  Althenea seemed to have already made up her mind, though, pressing her hand against the barrier and smiling at her sister. Then she turned toward the circle that held the Colt, approaching it warily. The appearance of the item seemed to confuse her at first, and she paused halfway across the circle, but the unmistakable aura of death surrounding it clearly identified its purpose: it couldn’t be anything but a weapon, and the spirit, recognizing that, confidently stepped forward.

  “Oh,” said Morgan, hurrying to link the circles together. The spirit shivered as the aura of death intensified, only sparing a dismissive gesture toward the portal as she drew closer.

  “Choice made. Fighter spirit!”

  “Yes,” Terisa said with a faint smile. “She was always fierce. Is fierce.”

  Whatever Morgan thought she expected, she didn’t expect Althenea to dissolve into mist and flow toward the Colt. She certainly didn’t expect the Colt to reject her, the woman’s spirit falling to the ground in the middle of the circle and looking mightily confused. Biggles, Terisa, and Dana all spoke up at once.

  “What?” “Wha—” “How odd.”

  Althenea just looked confused, dispersing into mist once again and making another attempt. This time, the weapon glowed a deep, angry red, cracks spreading along the surface before the spirit was once again returned to the central circle. Confusion gave way to irritation, and she cast a look at those assembled.

  “Biggles, what’s happening here?” Morgan asked.

  “I’m…actually not sure,” he replied with a note of curiosity, stepping forward to inspect the Colt. “The weapon is steeped in so much death, so much history and killing intent. There’s not enough there, I think, to contain all of tha
t as well as her soul.”

  “Well, how do we fix that?” Terisa asked, frowning. Althenea tried again to enter the Colt, and was again rejected. As she was returned to the center of the circle, part of her mist floated away, toward the opposite side—where the Veil sat, maw open, ready to devour her. The spirit struggled and eventually reformed, her expression panic-stricken. “How do we fix that quickly ?” she amended.

  “By adding more mass to the array!” he replied, fumbling in his pockets. “A-a wand, a sword, something !” In the circle, Althenea had turned to face the Veil and was pressing herself against the barrier, staring with naked fear.

  “Anything?” Dana interjected, staring intently at Biggles. Morgan turned to face her.

  He turned to look at the Engineer. “I mean, a bow or crossbow would be ideal, but, yes, any sort of weapon will do, if Morgan can help put it across the barrier.”

  Dana immediately turned and started away from the circle. “Kojeg!” she shouted, quickly abandoning bipedal locomotion in favor of a two-wheeled approach. Terisa shouted something from behind, something incomprehensible. “We need to amend my agreement with the Thuns!” She raced up to her workshop, which obligingly opened at her approach.

  “Oh, I dinnae like the sound of that,” the dwarf grumbled. “Old Kadrass will flay me alive as quick as he will you, lass!”

  Something inside the workshop thumped and clanged, as if Dana were throwing things around. She backed out the door, grunting and heaving what looked like a suitcase, if a suitcase were the length of a man.

  “Ye knew the bargain,” he admonished. “Unless ye give the Thanes summat of value, ye can no give weapons to anyone! Weren’t nae exception for—”

  Dana heaved, hauling the case upright and leaning it against her shoulder. “Oh, stuff your exceptions!” she yelled back. “I’ll build the dwarves a goddamn flying ship!” She started walking the case back toward the circle.

  “You what ?” Morgan demanded. “I just chewed you out over a nuke!”

  Kojeg simply stared, unable to respond, as The Titan laughed.

  “Good. Trade. Soldier.”

  “Glad you approve, Devil Dog, but we need to hurry,” Dana replied. Terisa shouted again; looking back, Morgan saw Althenea beginning to lose ground, struggling to push herself away from the Veil, which seemed to have grown darker and hungrier. Dana dragged the box back to where the pistol hung, then let it thump to the earth. She knelt down, popping several clasps down the length of the case, then stood and flung the lid back.

  Morgan whistled. “Is that a—”

  “Based it off the Barrett M95, yeah,” Dana replied. “Details later ; can you help me get this in the circle?”

  “…” Morgan stood dumbfounded for a moment. Seeing her father’s Colt had been enough of a culture shock; seeing this even more modern weapon was something else entirely. “Uh, yeah, just, uh…Huh. Yeah, I can open the circle and hold it together, but…there may be complications if she’s stuck between the weapons.”

  “If she still chooses it, we can fix it once she’s safe, can’t we?” Terisa asked.

  “Should be able to,” Morgan replied; Biggles nodded in agreement. She reached out to the circle with her magic once again, and this time she could feel the pull from the circle connected to the veil. She could only barely feel it herself, but its effect was clearly more intensely felt by the soul within. “Okay,” she told Dana. “Put it in the circle while I keep the barrier from breaking apart.”

  The Engineer lifted the rifle out of the case, then turned and carried it toward the circle. As Dana pushed the weapon through the barrier, her hands were briefly wreathed in the Sorceress’ glowing, purple energy. “That stings,” she complained, shaking her hands. “Like my hands were asleep.”

  “Sorry about that. Almost everything I do gets a touch of Lightning with the Mana.” Morgan restored the seal holding the circle, and everyone stepped back.

  This time when the spirit crossed into the circle with the weapons, nothing went wrong. I think it’s working, at least, Morgan thought. Althenea, once again in her mist form, seemed to sink into the metal of both weapons. She could feel the woman’s soul and the magic it contained, inscribing tiny runes across the grips and the barrels of both guns. The process happened so rapidly that even with [Mana Sight], Morgan could barely tell anything more than that the spirit seemed to be doing something to the weapons, but what that something was lay beyond her understanding.

  Almost as quickly as it began, it was done. Once the mist-form of Althenea had disappeared entirely into the metal, both the Colt and the Barrett glowed briefly, lit from within by a silvery light. Then between one heartbeat and the next, all three circles winked out, and both weapons fell to the ground.

  “So…” Dana’s voice trailed off as everyone stood staring. “Did it work?”

  Chapter 38: Impact Duality

  Terisa Aras lay prone on the top of the western corner tower above the walls of Castra Pristis, propped up somewhat comfortably on the bed of a wagon that had been temporarily commandeered for Dana’s current endeavor. The Worldwalker was attempting to teach Terisa how to use something she’d called a rifle, and Althenea’s new form was proving less than easy to adjust to for both parties involved. Her sister’s soul was no longer emanating agonizing pain and suffering, but confusion and indecision had taken their place.

  She quieted her mind, trying to slip into her usual focus while looking through the device Dana had called a scope . Unlike the far-sight spyglasses Terisa was familiar with, this one had no magical qualities of its own: instead, it seemed Althenea provided them. This lack of control was beginning to play merry hell with her own class- and skill-related vision enhancements, which she’d come to rely on by instinct over the course of decades. Adding to the problems, Althenea’s soul seemed unable to maintain its presence in the rifle, only able to animate it for minutes at a time before it flowed back to the other weapon as water flows downhill.

  The Colt, by contrast, was much easier for Terisa to manage. She’d long been familiar with various crossbows in use by the different peoples of Anfealt, and while there were differences in the function, the basics of aiming and pulling a trigger were the same. The problem facing them was that Althenea appeared unable to occupy both weapons at the same time. Whichever of the two her sister resided in glowed visibly, strange lines and runes which both Dana and Morgan had claimed resembled what they called “circuitry”, and which both women also declared to be cool. Her sister seemed determined to remain in the rifle as long as she was able, only returning to the Colt when forced to do so. But with a little patience, when the Huntress waited for just the right moment, the Barrett was simply amazing. The runes along the stock and barrel glowed, and, more by instinct than thought, she exhaled just as Dana had instructed and squeezed the trigger.

  The kick against her shoulder had been enough to stun even Terisa the first time she’d fired one of Dana’s projectiles. This second time, she was better prepared, and she felt a visceral satisfaction in the weapon’s response, similar to her first attempts at learning to shoot her bow. The entire weapon seemed to push itself back against her, and the supersonic crack set her ears to ringing. The far side of the gorge, she knew, was just about three miles distant; as she watched through the scope, she counted six heartbeats before she saw the small plume of dirt and dust marking the impact. As she lay there, the echoing thunder of the shot rolled back over her.

  She slid the bolt up and back, ejecting the spent shell from the chamber. The acrid, smoky scent of the weapon’s discharge stung her nose, but not in an entirely unpleasant manner. “It smells different from dwarven cannon smoke,” she observed. “Sharper, almost tangy.”

  “Yep.” Dana crouched next to her on the top of the tower, spider-like, with her suit’s limbs arching out from her back and planting themselves in the stonework. The Worldwalker had declared herself Terisa’s “spotter” for the interim, while the Huntress familiarized herself with A
lthenea’s new form. “It’s a different formula than what the dwarves use. Has to be; this application needs different properties. So, what do you think?”

  Terisa began easing the bolt forward to load another round, but as she was doing so, the glowing runes along the rifle’s frame faded, and she felt her sister’s presence flow back to the Colt, riding in its holster at her hip. She frowned, pushing herself back from the weapon. “I like it, in theory, but Althenea is having trouble, and I don’t like that .”

  Dana retracted the strange, single-eye spyglass that was built into her suit’s helmet, turning her head to look back over the main courtyard of the fort below. “I’ve been thinking about that. Morgan uses some kind of spatial magic; I know she does. She has to be keeping those crystals and who knows what else in some kind of pocket space like the bags of holding you guys use.”

  “There may be some workable solution in that kind of magic,” the Huntress allowed, “but Biggles is a Necromancer, not a mage.” Terisa pushed herself back up to her heels, folding the rifle’s bipod back up against the barrel and returning it to its case. She looked out from the walls toward the forest to the south. The Titan had been kind enough to move to the tree line before his uncontrollable drain on magic became a problem to the Expedition. Or, more importantly, before it became a problem for his magically supercharged daughter, she thought. “As for Morgan…” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “She’s already helped me enormously, and now I have to worry about the price for that before I ask for more help with this.”

  “I don’t think she thinks that way,” Dana replied. “She’s wilder than she realizes, and I think she just genuinely wanted to help—as much for her own entertainment as anything else. There’s no harm in asking if she knows of something useful for your sister’s current troubles.”

 

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