by John Bierce
Alustin stood in front of them, in half-charred paper armor. The Needle of Leagues strained against a sword in Alustin’s hands— an odd looking blade with a slight curve that Hugh had never seen before, covered in a truly absurd number of spellforms.
Sanniah launched herself back a few feet with one of her lightning jumps, and the Needle began charging itself up again. Alustin didn’t give her the time she needed, however. In a swirl of paper, he leapt after her, and they began exchanging blows rapidly. Glyph inscribed papers intercepted lightning bolts, and burning bits of paper filled the air around the two.
Then the spellforms on Alustin’s sword began to glow, and it began to leave translucent afterimages floating in its wake, almost like visible echoes.
“Ah can’t…” Godrick started, then simply trailed off.
Alustin stepped to the side in a move that obviously left one side open, even to someone who knew as little about swordplay as Hugh. He gasped as Sanniah swung the Needle of Leagues straight at the opening.
The harpoon hit one of the afterimages, and simply bounced right off. The afterimage dissolved a moment later, but Alustin was already on the offensive.
He began forcing the Havathi back, dodging gracefully around the afterimages his sword left in the air, while Sanniah found herself being hemmed in closer and closer to the water, each swing of her harpoon blocked by one of the motionless translucent sword echoes.
And then, defying all logic, she simply stepped forwards into the wall of hanging blades. Or, more lurched than stepped. The floating swords cut through Sanniah’s armor like it were warm butter, and one of her arms was severed entirely, crashing to the ground.
The afterimages dissolved entirely, and Sanniah’s corpse crumpled to the ground.
Out on the water, standing on one of the ruined columns of the pier, stood Sabae, wrapped in spinning water armor, her arm still outstretched from where she’d hit Sanniah with a blast of water from behind.
Hugh’s heart unclenched, and he staggered as he dropped his ward entirely. He exhaled, and started to relax as Sabae let her water armor drain back into the harbor.
Only to immediately tense up again.
Something immense was rising out of the water.
“What is that?” Hugh demanded.
“That,” Godrick said, “is Ampioc.”
Ampioc was an octopus. Hugh had seen octopuses before, hauled in by fishermen in Emblin in his childhood, when his parents took him and his little sister to visit the coastal towns on business. They’d just been little creatures, no more than a foot or two in length— most much smaller than that. There had also been little freshwater octopuses in the streams near his village, no longer than a child’s finger.
Ampioc, however, was the single biggest creature Hugh had ever seen. The immense red octopus must have been half again the length of Indris Stormbreaker. He took up a considerable portion of the harbor by himself, and what Hugh could see of the octopus’s arms looked big enough to tear a ship in half.
Hugh gulped.
One of Ampioc’s eyes, which was big enough to fit Godrick inside it twice over, slowly turned to focus on them. His pupil was a long, slightly curved rectangle.
Around him, Hugh spotted the others bowing, and he quickly followed suit.
After a moment, they all straightened, but nobody spoke as Ampioc surveyed the damage to his city.
Hugh took the time to look around as well and winced. They’d done quite a number on the city in just a few short minutes. A new forest was growing in the middle of the city. The apprentices had blown up a pier, and heavily damaged the docks. Several full streets were torn up and broken by Artur’s battle— which appeared to have ended. Artur himself was striding down towards the docks, his armor much reduced in size, his enormous hammer nowhere to be seen.
Ampioc slowly shifted his attention back to the group, and his color turned an even deeper red.
Except for one patch. Specks of blue appeared on his rubbery skin facing the group, and they quickly grew and merged together, forming letters.
Alustin raised a hand. Hugh noticed that his sword had vanished.
“I am Alustin Haber, servant of Kanderon Crux. I wish we had met again under better circumstances. I was traveling with my apprentices and Artur Wallbreaker on business for Kanderon, when we were ambushed by Havathi agents. Sacred Swordsmen, to be precise. We were in no way the aggressors, and were merely waiting for our ship to arrive.”
He nudged the Needle of Leagues lying on the ground with his foot.
“We successfully dispatched several of the attackers. I feel that their weapons are best used to recompense Lothal’s city treasuries for the damages,” Alustin said.
Hugh felt momentarily miffed at that— they’d worked hard at fighting Sanniah, and the Needle of Leagues would be a perfect complement to Sabae’s shield and powers.
The letters spelled out on Ampioc’s skin shifted into new words.
One of Ampioc’s massive arms rose from the water, a deluge of seawater running off it. Almost gently, the tip reached out and clenched the Needle of Leagues with one of the suckers on its underside and slowly withdrew it under the water.
“There’s another sword up in your new forest, buried under a mound of mostly-molten lead,” Alustin said.
The letters on Ampioc’s skin faded, but none replaced them immediately. Hugh wasn’t sure, but he thought that the octopus’s skin had grown a little less red.
“Ampioc!” Artur’s voice called out.
Hugh turned to see the stone mage arrive at the docks. He was clutching two swords in one stony fist— one bearing a sickly yellow-green pommel stone filled with writhing mist, the other apparently made of solid ice. His helmet had retracted, exposing his face.
The octopus’s skin tone cooled even further, taking on a distinct purple tinge.
Artur exchanged glances with Alustin, who nodded. Almost gently, Artur took the sword with the green-yellow pommel stone and slid it towards the edge of the pier. Another of the octopus’s arms reached out and gently slid the sword into the water.
“If it is acceptable ta yeh,” Artur said, “Ah have a use fer the other weapon.”
More letters formed on Ampioc’s skin, this time in yellow.
Given the octopus’s sheer size, Hugh suspected Ampioc could spell out impressively long speeches if it so chose. He wasn’t entirely sure what Ampioc meant by his comment, but Artur just nodded and held onto the sword.
Artur shook his head. “Ah’m sorry, Ampioc. Ah simply have too many bad memories a’ Lothal.”
Ampioc turned a deep blue that looked almost regretful to Hugh, then shifted to a pale olive green.
“Two,” Artur said. “Grovebringer’s wielder escaped me.”
“Grovebringer’s wielder escaped me as well,” Alustin said. “So we took down four of the five.”
“Our ship should arrive in the next couple of days,” Alustin said. “We’ll be leaving as soon as it finishes loading supplies.”
Ampioc didn’t respond to that, but one of his arms rose out of the water and, with surprising delicacy, picked Sabae up off the broken column and set her down gently next to the others.
Sabae squeaked a little, but looked more surprised than anything.
Ampioc turned away from them, turning eggshell white. Broken basalt pillars began lifting themselves out of the water, their cracks fusing together.
“I think that’s us dismissed,” Alustin s
aid.
As Alustin escorted them away from the lower harbor, Hugh looked back to see the destroyed pier reassembling itself. One of Ampioc’s great eyes flicked upwards and met Hugh’s gaze. He couldn’t even begin to guess what lay behind that inscrutable alien gaze.
Hugh turned away and followed the others back to the inn.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Helicote
By the time they reached their inn the destroyed pier was almost entirely restored, and hundreds of broken and scattered columns across the city had begun to heal and float back to their proper place. The sheer scale of Ampioc’s spellcasting was stunning— it dwarfed even Headmaster Tarik’s legendarily huge stone spells or Artur’s colossal stone armor.
The only spellcasting Sabae had ever seen that compared to it had been from other great powers— Indris, Chelys Mot, or her grandmother. Well, and Hugh, when he’d shielded Theras Tel from the sandstorm, but that had been a trick, a ward fueled by the storm itself, using the windlode spellform Sabae had provided him.
The last sight Sabae saw as the inn door closed was a trio of massive, tree-tall columns floating down the street.
“So Ampioc is a stone mage?” Hugh asked as they all sat down at one of the inn’s common room tables.
Sabae noted that Hugh still hadn’t drifted back into his unhappy mood yet— when there was an emergency, Hugh snapped immediately out of whatever unpleasant mental space he was in. It was inactivity that gave Hugh time to dwell and be miserable. He’d drift back out of things soon enough, but he’d be useful and alert until then.
Sabae was pretty sure that Hugh was going to be in an especially bad place when he did drift away, though. Hugh wasn’t the type to easily deal with killing someone else.
For that matter, Sabae was feeling pretty shaken up about Sanniah. She hadn’t told the others how bruised and battered she was, not to mention the large numbers of new burns she’d picked up. She could heal herself, but it would take a few days. She’d come terrifyingly close to dying out there.
Her hands started shaking a bit, and she sat on them to hide the trembling.
She wasn’t entirely sure Sanniah was the first person she’d killed— or helped to kill, anyhow, Alustin had done most of the work. There’d been a gravity mage in Theras Tel she’d hit pretty hard who hadn’t gotten up afterward, but she had no idea if they’d survived or not. She was pretty sure she was handling it better than Hugh, though.
“He’s a basalt mage,” she said. “Which Kanderon told us already.”
“Strictly speaking,” Alustin said, “He’s nine basalt mages. Each of his arms has their own mana reservoirs, and can semi-independently spellcast. Ampioc more coordinates and guides his arms than controls them.”
“That makes me somewhat less happy about being picked up by him,” Sabae said.
“They’re usually well behaved,” Artur said, waving the innkeeper over.
“Usually?” Sabae asked, feeling increasingly skeptical.
“It’s… complicated. But it went jus’ fine fer yeh,” Artur said. “And Ampioc’s arms are the reason there are so many cults in Lothal. Yeh can’t swing a stick without encounterin’ another one worshippin’ this arm or that.”
They all took a moment to order food— which, at the moment, was just a pot of fish stew that was kept warm in the kitchen between meals. They were the only ones in the common room, and there was only a single nervous cook and the inn keep here at the moment— everyone else was in hiding until they were sure things had calmed down. It wasn’t cowardice, just common sense when there was a battle between mages.
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” Sabae said, pointing at Alustin. “Starting with why Havathi Sacred Swordsmen attacked us.”
Artur glanced up from the ice sword he’d claimed. “Ah’d say it’s a wee bit unusual yeh haven’t been attacked by ‘em before, around Alustin. Yer teacher’s killed more a’ them than anyone livin’.”
“Not enough of them,” Alustin said quietly. In a more normal tone of voice, he continued. “Apart from the longstanding rivalry between the Librarians Errant and the Havathi Sacred Swordsmen, there’s also the ongoing hunt for Imperial Ithos and the Exile Splinter. They’re almost as close to finding it as we are.”
Sabae had known for a while that Alustin had some sort of grudge against the Havath Dominion, but she was starting to think it was a bit more intense than she’d imagined.
“Why didn’t you try and keep the Needle of Leagues for Sabae?” Hugh interjected. “A lightning enchanted weapon seems perfect for her, especially one that powerful.”
Sabae gave Hugh a surprised look at that. She hadn’t actually considered that.
“It wouldn’t have worked for her,” Alustin said. “First, because Sabae’s difficulties working magic at range would still apply to the Needle. Second, because it’s been pacted to Havathi forces for too long.”
“Pacted?” Talia asked.
“The Sacred Swordsmen are all warlocks,” Alustin said. “Ones who exclusively pact with magical weapons. I believe I’ve mentioned that before. There are some limitations to what magical weapons they can pact with— they need to have artificial mana reservoirs— but when they do, they gain the affinities used in creating the weapons, an unusual amount of control of the weapon, and often a few odd abilities related to the enchantment of the weapon. The weapon, in turn, grows gradually more powerful, slowly grows its mana reservoirs, and even tends to become intelligent. The oldest weapons used by the Swordsmen have grown alarmingly powerful, and many are actively loyal to the Havathi Dominion. The Needle of Leagues is one of the oldest weapons of the Swordsmen— it never would have accepted serving anyone else. Grovebringer, the bow that created the forest out there, is another of their oldest and most powerful weapons.”
“So why did Ampioc want it?” Talia said.
“I’d like to think he wants to keep the weapons out of Havathi hands, but most likely he intends to gift the younger weapons to his own warlocks, if he has any, and likely intends to ransom back the Needle of Leagues to Havath,” Alustin said. “If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have kept it.”
“Shouldn’t we be worryin’ about Grovebringer?” Godrick asked.
Alustin shook his head. “Grovebringer’s current wielder never attacks on their own, only in the company of other Swordsmen. We’re not sure why, but they’re probably long gone by now.”
“Do the Sacred Swordsmen only carry a single enchanted item, or—?” Talia asked.
“They usually carry three or so, though it’s rare they pact with all of them. Most warlocks have mana reservoirs too small to pact multiple times. Sanniah’s armor was a powerful enchanted item on its own, and I suspected she was pacted with it as well. Being pacted to multiple items with lightning enchantments is probably why she was so powerful.”
Sabae decided to steer things back in the right direction.
“What happens if Havath gets to Imperial Ithos first and claims the Exile Splinter?” Sabae said.
Alustin shrugged. “It would probably take them years, perhaps decades to figure out its use. They have a handful of crystal mages, but none as brilliant as Kanderon. Still, for someone as long-lived as Kanderon, that’s a short enough time period to be unacceptable. More concerning to me would be the likelihood they’d recover enchanted items from the ruins of Imperial Ithos— there were quite a number of extraordinarily powerful ones lost with the city. Or, perhaps, the odds that some Ithonian mage managed to transition into lichdom and is hanging around still, but that seems unlikely— liches were rare prior to the fall of the Ithonian Empire, and they destroyed many of the existing ones over the centuries of their expansion. There are some very notable exceptions, but liches and empires don’t get along well.”
Sabae could see that. Given their largely stationary nature, and their strong incentives to maintain close control of their demesnes, liches would be a major thorn in the side of anyone who wanted to expand their power
widely. None of the liches of the Endless Erg or the southwest coast of the Ithonian continent were particularly powerful, but the Kaen Das family had cultivated alliances with as many as possible— they were useful tools for preventing expansionist ambitions in the region. Not to mention, reliable allies that stuck around for centuries were rare enough. Few families or great powers were stable over the long term.
Of course, Indris and Kanderon did the same. Kanderon had probably sponsored and helped half the liches in the region, if not the whole continent, achieve lichdom.
Alustin was being too nonchalant about those specific threats, however. Something had him deeply worried about the return of Imperial Ithos, but Sabae couldn’t think of what else it could be.
Artur stood up, his stew somehow finished already.
“Hugh,” Artur said, “when yer finished eatin’, ah’ve got a project fer yeh ta’ help me with.”
Hugh nodded at Artur, then dug into his own stew.
Sabae kept staring at Alustin, who gave her a bland look, then picked up his own bowl of stew.
“I need to report this to Kanderon,” Alustin said.
“The stew?” Talia asked, an annoying smirk on her face.
Alustin started to reply, then smiled. “That would actually be quite entertaining,” he said. “But no, she needs to know that the Sacred Swordsmen were active so close to her territory.”
Sabae noticed that Godrick was antsy about something, but he didn’t speak up until the two older mages were both up the stairs.
“Yeh all saw Alustin’s sword, right?” Godrick said in a low voice the instant they were alone in the common room.
“Did we see the crazy sword that left murder-echoes hanging in midair?” Talia said. “I dunno. Did we also maybe see a giant octopus?”
Sabae poked Talia in the side. Talia gave her a dirty look, but settled down. Sabae grinned a little bit— she kind of got why Talia enjoyed poking and jabbing people.
“Alustin’s sword was a Helicotan sabre!” Godrick hissed.