by CM Raymond
He needed a few people with a little more muscle than he currently possessed.
“What’s up, Chief Engineer?” a voice asked from his right.
He spun to find Aysa standing in some rubble, tossing a large rock up and down in her inordinately large hand.
“Uh… Not much. I mean, a lot, really. I’ve been in there talking with the Oracle for over an hour. And…wow. Just wow.”
“Finally met your mental match, huh?” she asked.
He laughed nervously and pushed his hand through his dark hair. “She’s in a completely different league.”
“Guess you now know how the rest of us feel about you.”
Ignoring her, he glanced around the square. “Hey, have you seen Hadley around?”
She shook her head. “Think he’s off on a romantic walk with Laurel or something. I’m pretty sure she had a blanket draped over her arm.” Shrugging, she added, “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Not funny,” Gregory growled, his ears burning red.
“Chill out, man. She’s freaking smitten with you. It’s going to take more than an attractive self-confident muscular charming mystic to tear her away from you. Hmm. On second thought…”
Gregory’s face dropped.
“I’m kidding. Jeez! Take the slide rule out of your ass and have a little fun.” She glanced around. “What else we gonna do while we’re waiting around?”
“A lot, actually. Lilith has given me a job. That’s why I’m looking for him, or anybody else, really. I need a good pair of hands.”
Aysa waved the stub of her arm in his direction. “Shit. Guess I’m out.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Relax! This thing hasn’t bothered me in years. And now that I’ve had the chance to get some payback, I’m rather proud of it.” She lifted her arm again. “And you have to admit, ‘a good pair of hands?’ That was pretty funny. I’ll help, and we’ll grab a couple of those cute boys along the way. I mean, they’re not really cute, but there are not many kids my age around here, so cute is very relative.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They all have tiny hands like yours.”
She knocked Gregory gently with her shoulder as she skipped past him and chirped, “Let’s do your Lilith thing together.”
With a laugh, Gregory followed Aysa as she ambled toward a group of teenagers. They were hanging around at the southern end of the town square. Even with all the shit she gave him, Gregory couldn’t help but like the young Baseeki. She was funny, especially when he knew she was joking. But more importantly, she helped him to take the world less seriously.
“It’s what we got,” she had said the day before. “Might as well enjoy it.”
And it struck Gregory that she was right. The young warrior had a way of putting things in perspective for him. They were chasing monsters from the pit of hell, trying to save the world from oblivion, and he had all but lost his family, yet his life was still better now than when he’d lived in Arcadia.
Self-doubt had pummeled him daily in Arcadia, both at home with his parents and in the Academy where he was a failing student of magic. Here among the ruins of New Romanov he was the Chief Engineer—an indispensable member of the team—and it felt good. Damn good.
“You boys want to make yourselves useful,” Aysa asked as she approached the group, “or you planning on just standing around with your dicks in your hands?”
They stared at her, all eyes first taking in her long, strong right arm, and then her left, missing hand and all. Gregory watched in awe as she stood unwavering, chin proudly raised, shoulders back.
Knowing they were gawking, Aysa reached down and grabbed a stone. “With this arm, I can do this.” She turned and launched the rock in the air, striking a vulture in mid-flight. Their mouths opened slightly. She raised her left arm, with the missing hand. “I cut this one off myself ‘cause it was slowing me down.”
The teenage boys gaped now, faces turning pale.
“That is the right response. I am a badass, after all, and I’m looking for a few people to join the cause. You look like you wouldn’t last two seconds in a fight, but luckily there’s another way you can assist us.” She jacked her thumb at Gregory. “Our genius here is going to save the world or something. I told him that strapping young men such as yourselves would be happy to help.”
Four of the six kept their eyes on the ground, kicking the stones at their feet. The other two, both a year or so past puberty, stepped forward.
“I’m Roman,” the bigger of the two said. He was nearly six feet tall. His shaggy dirty-blond hair hung over his eyes, and his face had the scruff of a kid trying his best to grow a man’s beard. He gestured to his friend. “This is Yuri.”
“Glad somebody wants to put their hands to use,” Aysa told them, shooting daggers with her eyes at the others. “Nice to meet you guys.”
“Yeah, you too,” Roman said. He turned to Yuri, a thin kid who looked years younger than Roman, though he was a year older. He jabbed Yuri in the ribs. “Oh, right.” Turning back to Aysa and Gregory, he said, “Yuri’s mute.”
“Mute?” Gregory said.
The young man just nodded. Aysa stared at him, wide-eyed. “That is awesome. You and me should start a club.”
Gregory looked at them both, a little apprehensive. Aysa must have sensed it, because she elbowed him in the ribs. “What’s the matter? You got a problem with my new best friend Yuri here because he can’t talk?”
He sighed. “It’s not that. They’re just a little...young. We’re going to be handling some serious equipment. It won’t be the safest job. Maybe if they were a little older—”
“I can help too.” Gregory and Aysa turned to find a hunched elderly woman with white hair that held a blue tint in the sun. She was wearing a shawl that looked like it had been made before the Age of Madness.
“Not exactly what I meant, but we’re glad to have you on the team. I’m Gregory,” he said, extending a hand.
The old woman took it and gave it a squeeze with her cold, bony digits. “A pleasure, dear. You can call me Mrs. Shutov.” She smiled, then nodded to Gregory and Aysa. Her head snapped to the youths and her face grew stern. “Roman! Stand up, boy!”
Roman stood as tall as an Arcadian soldier. “Yes, Grandma.”
“The rest of you, there’s still rubble needs clearing near the wall. Hop to it.”
The remaining young men took off in a sprint and Yuri smiled widely, seeing that he and Roman had gotten the better end of the deal.
Aysa was almost jumping up and down. “I take it back. She’s my new best friend.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“It’s not all bad here,” Leah said, blinking her shimmering blue doe-shaped eyes. Her blond hair fell halfway down her back and had been styled to perfection that morning by her mother, who insisted that no matter the condition of New Romanov, beauty was worth the time it took. “I mean, I think we have a lot, really. Like my family and my dolls.”
Hadley laughed, his perfect teeth catching the light of the sun. “I imagine your life here is really quite good. Remnant and lycanthropes can’t take everything away from us, after all.” He bumped her arm with his elbow as they sat on a giant block of stone near the center of town. “And besides, no place is all bad or all good. We just have to hold onto the good stuff and fight off the bad.”
While half the BBB were off fighting monsters and the other half were protecting New Romanov, Hadley had decided to spend his time getting to know the place. It was the main reason he had left the Heights. To go on pilgrimage. To see the world and learn what it had to offer. And to do that, he needed to be among new people.
The eight-year-old girl grinned back at him. “You talk funny, but you’re cute.”
“And you,” Hadley bopped her on the nose with his finger, “are far too young to be telling boys they’re cute. But thanks.”
“No probs. What’s your home like? Is it more good or more bad?”
Hadley couldn’t help
but cheer up, thinking about the temple in the Heights. Pointing toward the mountain looming over New Romanov, he said, “See that big mountain there?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, I’m from a place called the Heights. We live at the very tip-top of a big mountain. In fact, you’d have to stack four or five of those mountains on top of one another to make it match mine.”
“Shit!” the little girl said.
Hadley furrowed his brow. The citizens of New Romanov were pretty free with their expletives for his taste. “And that is a word that little girls from the Heights never use.”
“Really?” She giggled. “Why not?”
Hadley shrugged. “Good question. Anyway, there are two kinds of people in the Heights. There are the rearick—”
“Like Karl!” she interrupted.
“Exactly. They live in a town called Craigston, and they work underground pulling beautiful gems out of the mountainside.”
“Is that why he’s so tiny?”
Hadley laughed. “Actually, yes—that is why he’s so tiny. The little buggers inside us that give us the power to do magic can also change what we look like, over a few generations. It was very convenient for Karl and his people.” He paused and shifted his weight, trying to find a comfortable spot on the rock. “But do me a favor, please. Don’t call Karl tiny. He hates that.”
“More funny talk. You can’t say ‘shit.’ You can’t call someone what he is. And you call the nanocytes buggers. I know all about them. Lilith taught me. But what’s your place like?”
Hadley scooted away from her a bit, leaving several feet between them. His eyes turned as white as the clouds as he hovered a hand over the empty spot on the block. He began to whisper to himself, and an image appeared: a majestic snow-capped mountain range as seen from a distance.
“Whoa! That’s cool,” Leah whispered.
Hadley laughed. “Just wait.” He pulled his hand back and then slowly pushed it toward the image, zooming in on one of the peaks and eventually centering on an image of Craigston, with rearick on shift change bustling in every direction. He gave her a quick tour, showing her the mouth of a mine. They slowed in front of Ophelia’s restaurant, and then pushed down the lane, out past the buildings.
“Those ones are like Karl,” she said. “But I don’t see people that look like you.”
“You don’t get sick riding in a cart on a winding road, do you?”
“No,” she said, glancing up at him quickly before looking back at the moving picture. “Why?”
“Hang on!” He twisted his hand, and the image pivoted to show the tall, winding steps that led to the temple. “Slow or fast?”
“Really fast!” She giggled.
“You asked for it.” He pushed his hand again and they sped up the staircase into the snowy landscape.
Leah screamed more than once as Hadley navigated the tight turns. She reached over and grabbed his arm on a particularly harrowing one as the ground almost fell out from beneath them. He slowed the scene when they reached the top. When he panned out, the Mystics’ Temple in all its majestic beauty came into view.
“Shit,” she breathed. Hadley let her get away with the expletive this time. After being away from home as long as he had been, he nearly cursed as well.
He spun his hand and they flew around the exterior, giving her a view of his home from every angle. Finally, he twisted his wrist to grant her a view of mountains and valleys from his favorite site for meditation.
“Can we go inside?”
Hadley closed his fist and the image disappeared. “Not today. We need to save something for tomorrow.”
She stuck out her lower lip, faking a pout, and held it for as long as she could before she laughed. “How’d you do that?” she asked, squirming on the rock in an attempt to look up his sleeve. “It’s a hell of a trick.”
“’Heck.’ ‘Heck of a trick,’” Hadley said. “And actually, it isn’t. It’s magic, just like the magic around here.”
Leah wrinkled her tiny brow. “That’s nothing like the magic around here. We just blast things and move stuff. Yours is way more fun!”
Hadley slid off the block and stood. “I’m glad you think so. Pretty sure most the kids in the temple would prefer blasting to projecting. There is one girl, Zoe—she’s extra gifted in story pictures. When she was your age, she could do it ten times better than I can now.” He reached down and mussed Leah’s hair. “Thanks for hanging out, but I’d better get going now. If my friends see me sitting in the sun with a beautiful girl—”
“There’ll be heck to pay?” she asked, eyes wide and blinking up at him.
Hadley couldn’t stifle his laugh. “Yeah, something like that.”
He turned and walked toward the edge of the city, where he had seen Parker head off on a patrol. While he doubted that Parker needed him, Hadley thought he’d join the Arcadian for his rounds. In all the excitement, he’d barely said more than three words to his friend.
Halfway to the broken wall, he heard the gentle voice behind him. “How’d you do it?”
He spun on his heel to see Leah following close behind.
“Is it like our firemaking?” she asked.
Hadley knew from stories his former teacher Selah had told him that when Ezekiel had originally come to the Arcadian Valley, he hadn’t taught multiple schools of magic. That was something that developed over time, as people found and pursued their specialties in new directions. Spending these last few months with the Founder had confirmed that for Hadley.
But things in New Romanov had changed as well since Ezekiel first learned magic here. With their focus being rebuilding, they had really gone into what the Arcadians called “physical magic,” letting other practices slip to the background.
Apparently to the point where the newest generation was unaware just how far their magic could take them.
Hadley put his hands on his hips and tilted his head to one side. “I thought you knew all about this stuff already. Maybe if you don’t know, then it’s a secret,” he said with a wink.
“Come on,” she cooed. “I won’t tell. I promise.”
Hadley squatted so that he was eye-to-eye with the kid. Her eyes sparkled, and he realized that he wouldn’t mind settling down someday, preferably in the temple, and making little mystics of his own. That was, if Irth survived the invasion.
He glanced dramatically over one shoulder, and then the other. Lowering his voice, he said, “OK. But you can’t tell anyone my secret.”
She pursed her tiny lips and nodded. “Promise,” she whispered back, also glancing around.
“That moving picture I made? I didn’t really make it. It’s up here.” He tapped her temple. “I was doing fancy stuff with my hands, I know. But the work of the mystics is really in the heads of other people. I wasn’t projecting it onto the stone, I was making you see it.”
“Shit!” she said in a hushed tone. Hadley decided not to correct her. Leah’s mouth might just be a lost cause. “I thought it was like my firemaking.”
Hadley dropped his mouth open dramatically. He kept his voice low and checked over his shoulders again. “Show me!”
Leah giggled. “You’re silly. Everybody can do firemaking.”
“Not true,” he told her. “I can’t. I mostly just make silly pictures. Come on, show me some fire.”
She nodded. “OK. But this is a secret too. And, well…I’m not very good.”
Cupping her hands in front of her chest, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were red. Hadley nearly jumped. The red eyes looked particularly uncanny on a little girl.
“Ready?”
Hadley nodded, and a tiny fireball appeared in her palms. She moved her hands in a circular motion, and it grew to the size of a small melon.
“Impressive!” Hadley said, clapping his hands.
“Not yet, it isn’t.” She swept her hands around, first slow, and then faster. The fireball shifted and grew in her hands. Hadley cocked his he
ad, intrigued by what she might be doing.
Leah let the ball sit in her left hand. With her right, she swept a perfect, tiny finger over the flames. The fireball danced and turned and twisted, until finally it took the shape of a dragon. Not just any dragon… Leah had made a replica of Sal out of flames!
“Holy shit!” Hadley said.
Leah smiled. “Language, Mr. Hadley!”
She lifted the dragon toward Hadley, and he could feel the heat roll off the little creature. Then she tossed the creature and twisted her wrist. At Leah’s command, the flaming red dragon spread its wings and flew off toward the horizon.
“That was amazing!” Hadley said, not needing to fake how impressed he was by her skills. With all the physical magic he had seen since coming down from the Heights, he had never seen it used to create something simply for the sake of beauty. He had spent so much time with warriors, and it had never occurred to him that their fighting magic could make something so playful.
Leah’s eyes turned back to normal, but her smiled remained the same. “Thank you,” she said, giving him a little curtsy. “What other kinds of magic are in Arcadia?”
Looking over her shoulder, Hadley saw Parker and Laurel climbing through the broken wall. “Maybe we should show you. Come on, I want you to meet my druid friend.”
****
After he’d stepped onto the broken rock wall on the perimeter of the city, Parker paused to survey the damage. He was impressed by how the little community had held off the Skrima, but before that they’d had months to recover from the previous onslaught. He knew that the walls had to be rebuilt immediately this time, even if they would only be destroyed again by an attacking red beast.
Without a wall, there would be little to no time to get the noncombatants to safety.
“It’s pretty bad,” Laurel said from behind him.
“Uh huh.” Parker didn’t turn, because he knew that she was still wearing the shit-eating grin. He had been impressed by the combination of her martial skills with the rope blade and her nature magic. Proud, even. But he wouldn’t let her know that until his own pride had recovered.