The Goblin and the Empire

by JD Cole

  The creature expected the move, however, and raised is head to catch her with its rigid, bone-crushing brow. Samantha had tucked her legs neatly below her as she jumped. The minotaur’s head following her up caught her by surprise, but she managed to limit the monster’s charge to the soles of her feet. Using the minotaur’s own momentum, she jumped off of its head and escaped, but not without straining her right calf. She landed awkwardly and spun with her guns up, but stopped herself from pulling the trigger at what she saw.

  The minotaur had dropped low again to stop its forward movement, but this left it in the perfect position for the two Paladins who had just joined the battle. Julian had sheathed his sword, and clambered onto the minotaur’s neck before it could stand. He grabbed tight hold of Jezrimeli’s blade. Lumina leapt up behind him a split-second later, bringing the back of his trinigar blade crashing down against the back of Jezrimeli’s blade. At that moment, Julian threw his entire weight against the sword at the same angle Jezrimeli had planted it. The combined attack shattered the minotaur’s horn where the sword was stuck, freeing the blade and sending at least four feet of the horn’s five-foot length spinning off into the dirt.

  Julian had no footing on the minotaur’s armor, and as he fell, he hurled Jezrimeli’s blade out and away from himself…

  Into the hands of the leaping zerivade, who used her own weight and momentum to swing the blade directly into the side of the minotaur’s head, half-severing its meaty ear.

  The monster tumbled to the ground, disoriented, where the Hood calmly stepped over it and shoved a handful of hoodwinks deep into each of its nostrils and ears. A punch and a kick to each of the devices set them off, completely destroying the monster’s hearing and smell. Derek casually avoided the enormous hand that swiped at him, and used his trinigar dagger to completely blind the creature, ignoring its rumbling screams. Lumina was already at Graon’s side, and Derek left the minotaur to join the Paladin.

  Jezrimeli yanked at the plate covering the minotaur’s other armor strap, only opening it after several tries at the latch holding it in place. The minotaur was wailing pitifully on the ground, unable to rise and unable to strike its killers. With the strap exposed, Jezrimeli quickly cut through it and kicked the armor open. Nim helped her pull the beast’s head back, finally revealing its thick neck for Samantha.

  Flashback walked up to the monster, aiming both of her VECs at its throat. She pulled the triggers and held them for several seconds before releasing and standing back. “Unbelievable,” she panted. The first few bullets hadn’t managed to penetrate, but the minotaur now had a gaping, bloody cavity beneath its jaw all the way into its skull. “I’m going to go put that other one out of its misery.”

  Kassak had jogged off into the grass, retrieving Graon’s leg and running it back to Taryn. Graon tried to ask what was going on, but his words were lost in painful moans. Almost half of his broken femur protruded from the bit of his thigh that remained. It was also clear that the minotaur had crushed him in its grip. “You did it, my friend!” Lumina said to Graon while feverishly working at tying off the ghastly wound. “You bought us the time we needed, and we have secured the waygate. Now rest while we take care of you!” The elf began shuddering, trying but failing keep from groaning in pain. Lumina muttered something unintelligible, quickly opening up a packaged syringe and injecting Graon with one third of its contents.

  “What is that?” Derek asked.

  “A gamble,” Lumina replied. “I have to be careful here… we do not have a complete knowledge of elf biology. They are more similar to us than most faeries, but even slight variations make all the difference in medicine and magic.” With the leg tied off and the medicines administered, Lumina stood.

  “Let me take him,” Jezrimeli said, carefully scooping the ranger up. “I’m the swiftest one here.”

  Everyone followed behind her, passing the bloodied mess of the second minotaur Samantha had just killed. By the time the humans arrived, Taryn was already hard at work trying to heal Graon. “I cannot save the leg,” the vampyre said, sweat pouring from his brow as his glowing hands hovered above the ruined stump. “The bone needs to be removed before we can seal up the wound. Most of his ribs are broken, and both of his arms have several breaks. He is also in a fever, I must treat that immediately or he will die.”

  “Can you dull his pain?” Jezrimeli asked, gripping her sword.

  “Yes,” Taryn nodded. “He is already delirious, but I will mask as much of the pain as I can for him.”

  “Wait,” Derek said as Jezrimeli raised her sword. He thought an image of liquid nitrogen at Lady Mae. “Mae, can you superfreeze the bone?”

  The hooded elemental appeared beside him. “If you soak him first, I can use the water to achieve that effect.”

  Derek nodded, waving the elves to follow him to the stream. “Bring cloths! We need to cover the wound in water!”

  “What are you planning?” Kassak asked, rushing to follow.

  “Freezing the wound at an ultra-cold temperature should help against infection and will make it brittle, requiring less force to break. It’ll be less traumatic on his leg than just… chopping at it.”

  They quickly used several soaking wet cloths to get the bloody bone and flesh as wet as Mae needed. After letting the sub-zero ice affect the leg for several moments, Jezrimeli used her sword to carefully shatter off the frozen part beneath the cloth tightly tied near his groin. With the leg now cleanly amputated, Lumina worked on sterilizing and bandaging it while Taryn cast the healing magics he thought most appropriate to the injuries and trauma.

  “The Ripwinger will be here momentarily to pick him up,” Julian announced. “Should one of us board with him?” he looked around at everyone.

  “Can’t you just like, ethergate him to safety?” Samantha asked.

  Taryn stood, weary. “I could open a gate to Windham, but it will weaken me. It may weaken me enough that I will not be able to attempt weaving a gate once we have infiltrated Gedaschen.”

  The team’s best case scenario was for Taryn to open an ethergate once they rescued Tom Ingram and Kirama, but no one was relying on this as a likely outcome. The sprites were on constant guard against enemy ethergates at Windham, using a myriad of detection and prevention methods; there was no reason to believe the Goblin King would be any less vigilant.

  “We’re down one member already,” Nim said gravely. “Graon didn’t risk himself for us to rescue him, and he’d never forgive us if we ekhiva’d the quest by tryin’ to save him.”

  “I have done what I can for him,” Taryn said. “I cannot say if it was enough.”

  Lumina nodded. “I will have the pilots keep an eye on him, but they need to stay on station, they cannot fly him back. As soon as we get him strapped onboard the Ripwinger, we should head through the gate.”

  “Agreed,” Jezrimeli said. “My new blade hasn’t drawn anywhere near enough shadowlander blood to make them pay for this.”

  “I’m going to resupply before we head through the gateway,” Samantha said, but then stopped and turned to the Hood. “Do you know how to handle a rifle?”

  “Yes.”

  Samantha stood in consideration for a moment, then teleported back to “Earth”, re-equipping herself and bringing back an S2 immer rifle chambered in the same caliber as her VECs.

  “Perhaps once we have Incerra in our possession, the dagger can save him,” Kassak said, lightly patting Graon’s shoulder. The broken elf was lost in a feverdream. “We will not fail you, Graon.”

  ~

  Taryn looked over the vials stored in a large bookcase near the waygate. He selected one and handed it to Jezrimeli, then pocketed three more.

  Derek looked at the bookcase and all of its vials. He had a large duffel over his shoulder, carrying his deactivated armor and the rifle Samantha had brought him. Everyone else had likewise re-armed themselves with the magic weapons they’d dared not use against the minotaur.

  “What are all of these?
” Derek asked of the vials.

  “Liquid ether,” Taryn answered. “If you have no magic of your own, you can pour one of these on the rune with the glyph that represents the gate you wish to travel to, activating the enchantment.”

  “And you’re sure this won’t set off the ward in this cave?”

  “Yes, I am confident the waygate is ignored. The wards were in place long before the minotaur arrived, and these wards are one-time use. Once it has been triggered, a new one would need to be created. A recurring ward would require more magic, thus becoming easier to sense. These were crafted to be subtle.”

  “I concur,” Lumina said, looking at Derek. “A wizard of Taryn’s experience can ‘sense’ the strength and age of an enchantment.”

  “Do enchantments get weaker over time or something?”

  “No,” Taryn explained, “but the longer an enchantment goes unused, the more its magic… feels different. The texture of milk versus butter or cheese, for instance.”

  “Can that ‘feeling’ be faked?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He speaks accurately,” Mae confirmed in his mind. “It is likely I felt like ‘cheese’ while trapped in the Ythsimerin.”

  “Fair enough,” he said aloud. To Mae, “And now you’re milk?”

  “Silky smooth, and chocolate,” she agreed.

  “If we hadn’t just been through all that with Graon, I would have laughed.”

  “Sorry, Hood. I will keep my focus.”

  “Are we ready, then?” Jezrimeli asked, standing near the glyph for Gedaschen.

  Samantha took up position near the gate, one of her pherr capsules in hand. “I’m good to go,” she said.

  “Let’s do it,” Derek said. Everyone drew their weapons and stood ready, save for Taryn. His enchanted sword would trigger the ward if he pulled it from the techno-sheath.

  Jezrimeli poured her vial onto the rune. The waygate, a circular rim carved into the cave wall and ringed with pictographic symbols, began to shimmer. Suddenly, the rock wall melted away, and the rescue team stared through a doorway into a stone room lit by torches.

  “Gedaschen,” Jezrimeli breathed, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “The ward is undisturbed,” Taryn confirmed when Derek looked at him.

  Samantha tossed her capsule through, into a hallway at the distant end of the waygate room. The glass meekly shattered, designed as it was to break quietly, and she spent several moments taking in the sense of her pheromones. “It’s clear,” she finally said. “You were right, there are no guards.”

  Everyone carefully stepped through, and Taryn took out one of the vials he’d pilfered, hiding it on the ground in a nook at the waygate’s base. “If I am not with you with when you escape…” he looked at everyone, trying not to convey fear in his instructions as he pointed at a squiggly glyph. “This rune is the one you want to activate.” Taryn gave the remaining two vials to Lumina. “In case you find other waygates you need to make use of.”

  “How long is that going to stay open?” Derek asked, but even as he spoke the waygate portal shimmered and disappeared. “Okay, so we get thirty three seconds to move through these. Keep that in mind.”

  “You were counting?” Julian asked.

  “Weren’t you?” the Hood replied.

  Taryn moved beside Samantha, and his hand gestured a quick wind spell at the wall where her capsule had broken. Samantha’s pherr was swiftly carried down the hallway. She looked at him and nodded, then at the others. “No one nearby.”

  “And no wards I can detect,” Taryn added.

  Derek turned away from everyone as his clothes melted off of him. He pulled his armor from the duffel, quickly donning the pieces. His uniform washed back into place on him, retaining the faery-rogue style.

  “Zerivade,” Julian said, pulling out a vial of fregrilense. “Could I trouble you to wedge this up in the ceiling there? Make sure it won’t get loose and fall out.”

  Jezrimeli took the vial and floated several feet up to the ceiling. She drew her sword and used the point of it to dig a wider crack between the stones. “How rough can I be with this?” she asked, eyeing the fregrilense cautiously.

  Julian was kicking away the small pile of dust that had fallen below her. “It’s much tougher than glass, but I would discourage you from hammering at it.”

  Jezrimeli frowned and began carefully working the vial up into the crack until she was satisfied that it was stuck.

  Samantha saw the Hood fiddling with the holographic sight on the immer she’d given him. She walked over and helped him dial it to display the number of shots fired, along with the barrel temperature. He reached back into the duffel and grabbed the three magazines she’d given him, stowing two of them in pouches on his uniform. He loaded the last one in the magazine well, verified the safety and charged the bolt, then adjusted the shoulder strap to sling the weapon comfortably on his person. “We shouldn’t leave this here,” he kicked the empty duffel.

  Samantha grabbed it and teleported so quickly that only her firefly lights gave any indication she’d left. “I put it back on the Ripwinger. Any idea where we are, then?” she asked.

  “The halls and districts of Windham are navigated with signs and landmarks,” the vampyre said. “Provided Gedaschen mirrors the sprite capitol as the queen suggested, I will know where we are once we find one.”

  “Mae,” Derek said, “cloak us.”

  The concealed rescue team quietly made their way through the castle, only once backtracking when Samantha detected the presence of irenaks ahead of them in a narrow corridor.

  “Wait,” Taryn warned as they reached an enormous atrium surrounded by tiered floors. Everyone huddled behind a large statue just inside the atrium entrance. “In Windham, this would be one of the housing districts… Leem. You can tell because of the fountain statue.” The large fountain in the center of the atrium depicted an eagle taking flight. There were irenaks and vampyres walking around the various floors overlooking the atrium. “This looks like housing as well, but it is called something else,” Taryn pointed at engraved symbols above a large doorway that opened up to a large hallway beyond. “That looks like irenak writing, I don’t know the language. But the Leem district is located three levels below the theater, so it follows that we need to head up a greatstair.”

  “Is the entire atrium one level?” Derek asked.

  “Yes. A greatstair is how you move from one level to the next. These stairs,” he motioned at the staircases around the atrium, “are only for accessing the apartments, though there are other hallways on each apartment level also leading to greatstairs and other sections of the castle.”

  “How many housing districts like this are there?” Derek asked.

  “In Windham, eighteen.”

  Derek took a last look around. This atrium was nine stories tall with at least twice the floor area as most Las Vegas hotels.

  “I am puzzled as to why this castle was built identically to Windham,” Julian whispered as they followed Taryn down another hallway.

  “Possibly to mock the sprites,” Lumina said. “Imagine the thousands of faery lives consumed to undertake this construction.”

  “From what I know of this jerkoff,” Derek said, “it’s probably one big training ground. The day he manages to invade Windham, his troops will already have the layout memorized.”

  “That is an alarming theory,” Taryn admitted. “But whatever the reason, it works in our favor, for now.”

  “Jerkoff,” Jezrimeli chuckled. “Good one.”

  The greatstair was where Taryn expected it would be. The long spiraling stairs were short to accommodate smaller faeries like solsdren (ice elves) or dulumin (gnomes), but wide enough that at least five minotaur could climb them side by side. An occasional shadowlander passed them on their long trek up, mostly irenaks and solsdren. Once, the passerby was a vampyre, and the entire team froze, even going so far as to hold their breaths. The vampyre did not notice them, and the
y moved on.

  “This concealment spell is a marvel,” Taryn whispered as they climbed the last flight of stairs. “I sincerely hope you might share how you crafted it once this is over.”

  “I probably won’t be sharing, sorry,” Derek breathed. Even with his augmented strength, he was getting tired after climbing a literal mountain of stairs. “Maybe one day, but there’s a lot I have to work out with Mae first. And probably Queen Kelli, too, since Veylsa is technically hers.”

  “You people really need to invent elevators,” Samantha wheezed. “My leg was already messed up after the fight, but it is killing me now!”

  “It could be worse,” Nim reminded her.

  Samantha looked at him grimly for a moment, then nodded. “Quite. Apologies, Nim, we have a mission to complete, thanks to Graon.”

  “Here,” Taryn reached down and lightly gripped Samantha’s calf.

  “Oh,” she breathed at the sudden feeling of warmth in her leg. “That is wonderful. Thank you!”

  “I cannot spare much energy, but I am pleased it helped,” he smiled tiredly.

  “Do you think Incerra will heal Graon?” Kassak asked Taryn.

  “It is a powerful artifact,” the wizard nodded. “I believe it can indeed heal him, and if I bind with Kirama, that will be the first thing I use it for.”

  « CHAPTER 29 »

  The Sprite Queen

  “Are you certain this is appropriate?” Zaiyensa asked, staring at the armor Devon had designed.

  “She has a point,” Kim said, staring at the armor. “I mean, it looks cool for a Hollywood movie, but it’s not something I would expect to see her wearing into battle with a group of faeries.”

  “Trust me,” Devon said. “Kelli is a huuuge comic book nerd. This armor is mostly based on a battlesuit from her favorite comic Nine Lives.”

  “I hated that movie!” Kim frowned.

  “Kelli hated the movie, too, but she loves the comic book.”

  “Please explain,” Zaiyensa said. “I do not wish to be rude by reading your thoughts.”